- The rollout of the coronavirus vaccine remains a bit bumpy in the US, bogged down by everything from states with complex recipient strokes to delivery limits.
- President-elect Joe Biden delivered comments on Friday outlining his plan to significantly improve the rollout of the COVID vaccine after next week, when he and Vice President Kamala Harris take office.
- Meanwhile, interim findings related to Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine trial show promise, suggesting yet another COVID vaccine will soon be approved in the US.
News of the coronavirus vaccine continues to rise, and the week’s end brought a number of new developments, including the Trump administration misleading the nation about the size of the US vaccine stockpile to President-elect Biden and revealing more details of its comprehensive national COVID vaccine strategy. The latter includes urging states to dump complicated levels and make more vaccine sites and federal resources available, dramatically increasing the rate of vaccination. As for the former, it appears the Trump administration has either been outright lying or badly messed up (or a combination of both) when it comes to US vaccine reserves.
Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar announced on Tuesday that the government would “release the entire stock (of the vaccine) for order by states, rather than keeping second doses in reserve.” Except, oops – according to what one senior official said CNN, what reserve did we have has already been used up. At least the vaccine news isn’t all bad – just look at the new research data released earlier this week in the New England Journal of Medicine regarding the safety, efficacy and potential side effects of the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine.
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According to the study’s findings, Johnson & Johnson researchers had randomly assigned just over 800 participants to receive either a high or small dose of the vaccine, or a placebo. The results show that 29 days after vaccination, at least 90% of the study participants had developed neutralizing antibodies – a figure that grew to 100% 57 days after vaccination.
Some of the side effects of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine, due to be approved in the US soon, include:
- Fever
- Headache / muscle pain
- Fatigue
- Injection site pain
And that’s it so far. Pain at the injection site of the vaccine appears to be the most common side effect among participants in the J&J study. Hopefully, this good news will help pave the way for a quick decision on whether to approve Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine for use in the US, where part of the bottleneck has been a self-imposed restriction on vaccine supply. “ Self-imposed, ” in the sense that the Trump administration had led, among other things, to the administration’s mistakes that, among other things, he had not bought enough of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine to make a big dent in the US so far.
Andy is a Memphis reporter who also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When not writing about technology, he can be found protective of his burgeoning vinyl collection, as well as his whovianism and binges on a variety of TV shows you probably don’t like.