Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday to allow emergency use of its one-time coronavirus vaccine, after announcing that it is 72% effective.
The pharmaceutical giant’s vaccine is safe and offers strong protection against COVID-19 in moderate to severe cases, based on preliminary results from a large international study.
While it does not appear to be as effective at preventing the disease as the vaccines from its competitors Pfizer and Moderna, it has the advantage of requiring only one dose instead of these companies’ two injections. Further, these differences may be due to the way the tests were conducted And therefore, according to experts, they may be more a matter of perception than reality.
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The FDA has asked its independent advisers to make a public review of all available data from Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose injection studies before deciding to license a third vaccine in the United States, as with its competitors .
Dr. Peter Marks, FDA’s chief of vaccines, warned that no comparisons should be made between the three vaccines before the evidence is complete.
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“With such a need to control this pandemic, I believe we cannot ignore any instrument in our toolbox,” he told the American Medical Association last week. “We will have to do everything we can to ensure that we find the populations that will benefit most from each of these vaccines and apply them in a very thoughtful way.”
What the numbers show
Overall, the single-dose vaccine was 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19, according to early findings from a study of 44,000 people in the United States, Latin America, and South Africa.
But it had 85% protection against the most severe symptoms, and as of 28 days after the vaccine, the researchers found no one vaccinated who needed hospitalization or died.
Weaker but still fights virus mutations
The single-dose option worked best in the United States, with one 72% effective against moderate to severe COVID-19, compared to 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa, where a more contagious mutation of the virus is spreading.
Scientists have been looking for evidence of how vaccines work in the real world as countries try to find defenses against the rapidly mutating virus. In this context, the news of the protection offered by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, while weaker, has been greeted with optimism.
With information from The Associated Press.