The Biden administration is warning states to prepare for a “limited supply” of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine to be made available, after federal health authorities cleared the shots for use on Tuesday. States will likely be unable to begin requesting their first shipments until next week. 

“A limited number of doses of Novavax COVID-19 vaccine will be distributed and not all providers are expected to carry Novavax COVID-19 vaccine,” says a planning document published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

States will not be able to begin ordering from the Biden administration’s supply of Novavax’s vaccine until the week of July 25, the document “tentatively” estimates.

Read more at CBS.

What’s happening

The CDC has recommended a new COVID-19 vaccine called Novavax.

Why it matters

Novavax is the first protein-based vaccine for COVID-19 available in the US, though protein-based vaccines have been around for decades.

What it means for you

If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, you’re eligible for Novavax, which expands the vaccine options.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine late Tuesday, following an endorsement from a group of scientific advisers that give advice to the CDC. 

Read more at CNET.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on Tuesday that a newly authorized vaccine from Novavax be used as an option for adults seeking a primary immunization against the coronavirus.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C.’s director, signed off on the recommendation of a panel of vaccine experts that had unanimously endorsed the vaccine on Tuesday afternoon. The decision removes the final regulatory hurdle for the fourth Covid-19 shot authorized in the United States.

Read more at The New York Times.

Health officials around the world are racing to curb an outbreak of monkeypox cases that has swelled into the thousands, deploying both vaccines and treatments for a disease that can lead to weeks of painful rashes and lesions for those infected.

While monkeypox infections have been seen before in the U.S. — in two travelers from Nigeria last year and in 47 cases that were linked to imported animals back in 2003 — the current outbreak is by far the largest recorded in American history. 

Here’s what’s known about the monkeypox outbreak and response:

Read more at CBS.

Millions of children around the world, most of them in the poorest countries, missed some or all of their childhood vaccinations over the past two years because of a combination of conflicts, climate emergencies, misinformation campaigns, pandemic lockdowns and Covid vaccination efforts that diverted resources, according to a new analysis from Unicef, the United Nations agency that vaccinates half the world’s children, and the World Health Organization.

It is the largest backslide in routine immunization in 30 years, the report said. Combined with rapidly rising rates of malnutrition, it has created conditions that could threaten the lives of millions of young children.

Read more at The New York Times.

States where parents have hesitated to inoculate their children against Covid-19 are now ordering fewer doses of the vaccines for children under 5 than others, underscoring the challenge facing the Biden administration as a highly transmissible variant sweeps the nation.

Experts broadly agree states shouldn’t order more doses than they think they’ll use. But they worry the low demand in states such as Alabama and Mississippi is a warning sign of the widening ambivalence among many parents about the benefits of vaccinating children against the virus and continuing politicization of health care.

Read more at Politico.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized Novavax’s protein-based Covid vaccine for adults, providing Americans with an alternative to the mRNA-based shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

The Novavax primary series is given in two doses, administered 21 days apart.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

“Today’s authorization offers adults in the United States who have not yet received a Covid-19 vaccine another option that meets the FDA’s rigorous standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement.

Read more at NBC.

The worldwide monkeypox outbreak that began in early May has so far led to more than 7,500 infections in 57 countries, with more than 600 of them in the US. Behavioral strategies are critical for preventing monkeypox transmission — check out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) refreshingly straightforward advice about cleaning fetish gear! — but with case counts still rising, vaccination against the virus is more urgently emerging as an important tactic for stopping its spread.

Monkeypox generally causes several days of flu-like illness and lymph node swelling followed by a blister- or pimple-like rash. While the version of the virus causing the current outbreak is rarely lethal, its lesions can be extremely painful and may leave scars.

Public health authorities have been administering vaccines to close contacts of monkeypox cases since the early days of the outbreak. But in recent weeks, they’ve been taking a more expansive approach to vaccination, offering it to people at risk for monkeypox exposure — even if they haven’t had contact with a confirmed case.

Read more at Vox.

COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rose globally during 2021 even during a time of uneven vaccine distribution, according to a new study published earlier this week.  

For the study, researchers surveyed more than 23,000 individuals across 23 countries, finding vaccine acceptance rose by 3.7 percentage points from the year earlier to 75.2 percent in 2021.  

The authors noted the most common forms of hesitancy stemmed from mistrust in the science and effectiveness and safety concerns. Other common reasons for hesitation were rooted in personal experience, like sickness.  

Read more at The Hill.

DENVER — The Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is standing up vaccine clinics for monkeypox. The state’s overall strategy is different than it was for COVID, but some of the hurdles are the same.

We asked why those same issues are showing up after all the practice of the pandemic.

Read more at 9 News.