Talks are progressing on securing a third COVID-19 vaccine, produced by Novavax, which could be available by June, says the head of Australia’s drugs watchdog the TGA.

Adjunct Professor John Skerritt said Novavax vaccine trials were showing “very promising early results” but they were not yet complete and the company still had to establish large-scale manufacturing arrangements. 

“I think that we probably are still, sadly, a couple of months away — June — before we will get the Novavax data,” he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

“We talk to them regularly and I was talking to them yesterday and we are talking with them at a big meeting on Thursday.