A vaccine from Novavax has been shown to be 89% effective in preventing Covid-19, according to the US biotech firm. It also remained highly effective against a variant first identified in the UK.
However, it offered significantly less protection against a highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus first identified in South Africa. How does the vaccine work? The Novavax vaccine works like other vaccines by teaching the immune system to make antibodies to the coronavirus spike protein.
Researchers inserted a modified gene into a virus, called a baculovirus, and allowed it to infect insect cells. Spike proteins from these cells were then assembled into nanoparticles which, while they look like coronavirus, cannot replicate or cause