Novavax Inc. has submitted its C-19 vaccine to Health Canada for approval. Word came over the weekend that the US firm, headquartered in Maryland and with labs in the UK and Sweden, had quietly submitted its product. Canada has ordered 52 million doses of the Novavax shot. Because of the emergency nature of the pandemic, Health Canada is accepting applications for vaccines before the final trial data is ready, allowing the review team to start pouring over the documents on an ongoing basis, rather than waiting until everything is finished. In results reported Friday, the Novavax vaccine scored an 89.3 percent effectiveness against the virus during tests in Britain. It is said to be especially effective against the so-called UK variant. This perhaps suggests again that while the variant is highly infectious it is possibly less virulent (i.e. deadly) than the original.
