(Reuters) – Novavax Inc has submitted its COVID-19 vaccine candidate to the Canadian Health Regulator for authorization for emergency use, after the pharmaceutical company said last week that the vaccine was 89% effective in a UK trial.
The candidate for the vaccine will be reviewed in real time as soon as the Canadian government accepts the application, which was submitted by the company on Friday, according to a notice on Health Canada’s website. https://bit.ly/3oCuFTr
Real-time reviews can speed up the process of approving a successful vaccine by enabling researchers to submit findings in real time, even before the final trial data is ready.
Novavax has an agreement with the Government of Canada to deliver up to 76 million doses of its vaccine.
A major late-stage trial in the United States and Mexico that began in December is also underway.
Vaccinations by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. have already been approved for emergency use in Canada.
Last week, Novavax said that the vaccine was 89.3% effective in preventing COVID-19 in a trial conducted in the UK, and that it was almost as effective in protecting against the more contagious variant that the was first discovered in the island.
(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru, edited by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
Originally published