AC DC. The panel approved Novavax's Covid-19 vaccine.

An influential scientific panel on Tuesday recommended that a newly licensed vaccine from Novavax, a pharmaceutical company in Maryland, be used as an option for adults seeking a primary vaccination against the coronavirus.

The next step will be for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky to accept the panel's recommendations, which usually happens quickly. This will be the final regulatory hurdle for the fourth Covid-19 vaccine authorized in the United States.

The Novavax vaccine is expected to play a limited role in the country's vaccination campaign, at least initially. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration cleared it as a primary vaccination for adults, but has not yet considered it for a booster.

The 12 members voters of the C.D.C. panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, voted unanimously to approve the vaccine.

Novavax, which has received significant federal funding to develop its vaccine but lagged far behind in the vaccine race, hopes his vaccine will appeal to Americans who have so far refused to get vaccinated. Somewhere between 26 million and 37 million adults in the United States have yet to receive a coronavirus vaccine, according to survey data presented at the meeting by Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra of the C.D.C.

But in countries where it has been available for months, Novavax's vaccine has yet to have a significant effect on vaccination rates. Novavax said in its panel presentation on Tuesday that just over a million doses of its vaccine had been administered worldwide through the end of June, only a tiny fraction of the reach of competing injections. /p>

The Biden administration said last week it would purchase 3.2 million doses of the two-shot vaccine from Novavax, enough to fully vaccinate 1.6 million people in the United States. The vaccine is not yet available in pharmacies and other clinics that administer injections. Novavax said in a press release after the vote that the F.D.A. had signed the first doses destined for the United States and that the company plans to ship its vaccine to a distribution center "in the coming days".

The vaccine has been shown to be highly protective against infections and serious illnesses due to the coronavirus in clinical trials, but these were conducted before the emergence of the Omicron variant, which greatly reduced the effectiveness of other vaccines authorized in the infection prevention.

Novavax's vaccine works differently than the three Covid vaccines previously licensed in the United States. It provokes an immune response with nanoparticles made up of proteins from the surface of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Vaccines based on similar proteins have been used around the world for decades.

Dr. Evelyn Twentyman of the C.D.C. presented survey results suggesting that relatively few unvaccinated Americans would choose Novavax. Only 16% of unvaccinated respondents said they would 'probably' or 'definitely' receive a protein-based Covid vaccine, and 50% of unvaccinated respondents said they 'probably' or 'definitely' would not. not.

At Tuesday's meeting, C.D.C. Officials reviewed clinical trial data that linked the vaccine to a high but low risk of developing forms of heart inflammation called myocarditis and pericarditis.

Dr. Filip Dubovsky, Novavax's chief medical officer, told the meeting that the company was monitoring cases of heart inflammation in countries where the vaccine was already licensed. By reviewing just over a million doses, the company identified 17 definite or probable cases of myocarditis and pericarditis, he said.