Novavax vaccine in Italy: will it convince no vax? Bassetti: “Nobody will do it”

The first Novavax anti Covid protein vaccine arrives in Italy. The doses of Nuvaxovid, this is the official name, can be booked from tomorrow, February 23, in Piedmont and from Thursday in Lazio. And by the end of this week, a first supply of one million doses will be immediately distributed to all regions and autonomous provinces, as announced by Commissioner Francesco Figliuolo. Based on the more traditional technique of recombinant proteins, the declared goal is to convince the most refractory Italians to get vaccinated, so much so that it has been renamed ‘the no vax vaccine’. But not all experts are convinced that it can dissolve the granite reserves of the antivaccinists. Read also For Massimo Andreoni, head of infectious disease at the Tor Vergata Polyclinic in Rome and scientific director of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases (Simit), the arrival in Italy of the Novavax vaccine “is certainly a further opportunity, especially for those who have had doubts on the mRna vaccine and may prefer this traditional protein vaccine. But I fear that by now the situation on the no-vax front is very gangrenous and it will not be easy for all anti-Covid immunizations to convince themselves to get a dose of Novavax “. On the same line Matteo Bassetti, according to whom “no one or very few will get vaccinated even if it is not an mRna vaccine, but a protein one”. “Here the problem is one of mental closure towards vaccines in general”, says infectious disease specialist and head physician of the San Martino hospital in Genoa, explaining that “mRna technology will give us the vaccine for many cancers. Technology is a positive evolution. mRna, thank goodness there was. Those who attack Big Pharma as if it were the ‘Specter’ remember that it is thanks to these realities that we now live to be 85. Luckily there are pharmaceutical companies that if we had to wait there ‘Italy with the money it allocates for research, do you know where we would be? “.” We hope that the most hesitant people, who did not want to get the mRna vaccine, can decide, with a traditional vaccine such as Novavax, to get vaccinated “against Covid, hopes, for his part, Massimo Ciccozzi, head of the Medical Statistics and Epidemiology Unit at the Bio-Medico Campus in Rome. “Novavax is an old-concept vaccine – recalls Ciccozzi – a protein vaccine such as those of hepatitis B, HPv, herpes zoster and therefore – the doctor foresees – not so much the no-vaxes who have an ideological preclusion towards vaccines, but the more fearful could overcome the mistrust thanks to this drug. Although – concludes the epidemiologist – there is evidence on the immunogenicity of Novavax, but there is still no evidence of efficacy against the Omicron variant “. Instead, he expresses serious doubts. the immunologist Mario Clerici. “I don’t think the arrival of the Novavax vaccine will give the hard and pure no-vaxes to give it to them. Because they have a much deeper rejection than the vaccine formulation itself.” “The hope – he explains to Adnkronos Salute – is that, since Novavax is a much more traditional vaccine, it can convince those people who did not want to vaccinate with mRna products such as Pfizer or Moderna in the false belief that mRna enters the nucleus and it alters the DNA. But I think it is difficult for it to convert no-vax “. “What people may not know – continues the professor of immunology at the University of Milan and scientific director of the Don Gnocchi Foundation – is that the Novavax vaccine, precisely because it is a traditional vaccine, contains adjuvants” which serve to stimulate immunity and “that instead there are no mRna. Some time ago among the no-vax there were those who said no” to shield injection precisely for these ‘ingredients’. It was a widespread argument. “So I fear, since I know several people opposed to the vaccine, that they will not even be convinced by this vaccine. Even if it is the hope that I am wrong and that we will be able to make them give in to this important form of protection from Covid” . As for the efficacy, for the Novavax shield product it is “good – concludes Clerici – even if the mRna vaccines are always the ones that do better, as can be seen from any comparison. Modern is the one that works a little better in trials than all the others, Pfizer is second and the combination of them is the top. But the Novavax vaccine still works very well. ” Finally, Mariano Amici, the Ardea doctor suspended without salary for his positions against anti-Covid vaccines, is waiting to pronounce. “If it is a protein vaccine that contains the attenuated or inactivated virus, it belongs to the category of older generation vaccines, which have been tested for hundreds of years: we certainly know what we are getting into, unlike these other vaccines we do not know which ones be the possible consequences at a distance. This is the substantial and very important difference. But I still have to study it and understand well how it is done, to pronounce myself “, he tells Adnkronos Salute. So would you recommend it? “I always look at vaccines on mutable genes with a bit of a critical eye – brakes Amici – because the effectiveness is relative. And since the effectiveness is very relative and in any case the vaccine gives some risk, I don’t know exactly from which side the balance between risks and benefits. If with a vaccine for a non-mutable virus the balance between risks and benefits certainly hangs on the side of benefits, in this case – he concludes – they are either equal or more on the side of risks “.