Artur Widak | NurPhoto | Getty Images
Johnson & Johnson applied for an emergency use license from the Food and Drug Administration for its coronavirus vaccine after it released data last week showing that it was about 66% effective in protecting against the virus.
If J & J’s application is approved, it would be the third Covid-19 vaccine approved in the US for emergency use, after vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Pfizer’s vaccine was approved by the FDA on December 11, and Moderna’s a week later.
US officials and Wall Street analysts eagerly await the approval of J & J’s vaccine, which could happen as early as this month. President Joe Biden is trying to speed up vaccinations in the US, and experts say his government needs a range of drugs and vaccines to beat the virus, which killed more than 450,000 Americans in the past year.
Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses to be administered about three to four weeks apart, J & J’s vaccine requires only one dose, easing logistics for healthcare providers.
J&J said on Jan. 29 that overall the vaccine was 66% effective at protecting against Covid-19. However, the vaccine turned out to be less potent against other variants. The level of protection was only 57% in South Africa, where a new highly contagious species called B.1.351 is spreading rapidly. Officials in South Carolina discovered the first known US case of that kind last month.
Infectious disease experts point out that J & J’s numbers cannot be used as a direct comparison to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which were found to be 95% and 94% effective, respectively. That’s because J & J’s vaccine is a single dose, and the company’s trial was conducted when there were more infections and new, more contagious variants, they said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s foremost infectious disease expert, said the main finding of the J&J data was that the vaccine was found to be 85% effective in preventing serious diseases.
Most importantly, more importantly than preventing someone from getting a sore throat and sore throat, is preventing people from ‘getting serious illness,’ the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said during a phone call to reporters on Jan. 29. “That will alleviate so much of the stress and human suffering and death in this epidemic.”
The FDA has indicated it would approve a vaccine that is safe and at least 50% effective. The flu vaccine, in comparison, generally reduces people’s risk of getting the flu by 40% to 60% compared to people who have not been vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
J&J has said it plans to ship the vaccine at 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit. In comparison, Pfizer’s vaccine should be stored in ultra-cold freezers that keep it between -112 and -76 degrees Fahrenheit. Moderna’s vaccine should be shipped with a temperature between 13 and 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced in August that it had reached a deal with Janssen, J & J’s pharmaceutical subsidiary, worth approximately $ 1 billion for 100 million doses of its vaccine. The deal gives the federal government the ability to order an additional 200 million doses, the announcement said.
This is a story in progress. Please check again for updates.