The vaccine was 72% effective against moderate and severe illnesses in the United States, the company said.
It is a marked difference from Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and can make people hesitate about which vaccine to get or when to get it. Vaccines already available on the market in the United States are about 95% effective in general against symptomatic Covid-19, perhaps even more effectively against severe cases.
But experts say the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will still be useful against the pandemic in the United States and around the world.
“Among all participants from different geographies and including those infected with an emerging viral variant, the candidate vaccine COVID-19 from Janssen was 66% effective overall in preventing the combined outcomes of moderate and severe COVID-19, 28 days after vaccination . The beginning of protection was observed as early as the 14th, “the company said in a statement.
Janssen is the vaccine arm of Johnson & Johnson.
“The level of protection against moderate and severe COVID-19 infection was 72% in the USA, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa, 28 days after vaccination.”
“We are 85% effective in preventing serious illnesses, which we define as illnesses that make you feel particularly bad at home, or you can go to the hospital, or worse,” Dr. Mathai Mammen, global head of research and development at Johnson & Johnson, told CNN.
“And now we are completely protective, it would seem 100% protective, against diseases that really make you go to the hospital, we are 100% protective against death.”
The company said the results occurred in all age groups and people of various ethnicities.
Mammen said the company was working to obtain an emergency use permit from the US Food and Drug Administration “within a week.” It will be the third company to seek US FDA for a coronavirus vaccine. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech were authorized in December and are now being given to millions of Americans.
Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine specialist at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biologicals Advisory Committee, said that under normal circumstances there may not be much market for a vaccine that is significantly less effective than two others already on the market. But he added that these are not normal times, with an epidemic of violence and a shortage of vaccines.
Pfizer and Moderna use genetic technology called messenger RNA or mRNA technology. Johnson & Johnson uses a weakened common cold virus, known as an adenovirus, to carry genetic instructions to the body to request an immune response.
“In a better world, we would have abundant amounts of this messenger RNA vaccine, Pfizer and Moderna, and that would be detrimental to a vaccine that is clearly less effective. But that said, we have limited amounts of mRNA vaccine,” said Offit.
Offit was vaccinated, but said that if he didn’t, he would first look for a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and, if he couldn’t find one in a reasonable period of time, he would get a Johnson & Johnson vaccine, if it was available. vaccine and then obtain a different vaccine should not pose a safety problem.
“I would make an effort to get an mRNA vaccine first,” said Offit. “Not being able to get it and knowing that I may not be able to get Pfizer or Moderna for many months, and knowing that this virus is still spreading across the country, I would take J&J with the certainty that I could get Pfizer or Moderna more afternoon.”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has advantages, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
“A vaccine that is cheap, is a single dose and has no cold chain requirements – this is very good,” Fauci told CNN.
In addition, no case of a severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis was observed in any of the volunteers, the company said.
Fauci said the results would look even better if Janssen did not have to compete against the 94% and 95% efficacy seen in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine tests.
“Do you know what the problem is? If it were there and we didn’t have Moderna 94-95% … We would have said wow, a 72% effective and even more effective vaccine against serious illnesses is really incredible,” he said in an interview. by phone.
“But now we are always judging against 94 to 95%. That said, this is a vaccine that could be used mainly in developing countries to keep people out of the hospital. It is very effective against serious diseases,” he said. Fauci added.
Mammen said the Janssen vaccine was tested later, after new variants of the coronavirus were already circulating. One in particular, called B.1.135, was dominant in South Africa when the vaccine was tested there. This variant has mutations that may slightly weaken the effects of the vaccine.
But it still protected people, said Mammen.
“I am looking at this South African variant and seeing that we are able to completely protect ourselves against worrying levels of illness when someone can go to a hospital,” he said.
In addition, people do not have to worry about returning for a second dose.
“We really wanted it to be a single dose. So we optimized our antigen to get enough immunogenicity after one dose, instead of two,” he said.
“If it is a single dose vaccine, then a billion doses of vaccine would translate into a billion vaccinated people,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, from Harvard Medical School, who helped develop the vaccine.
And, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it does not need to be stored in freezers. It can be stored for three months in refrigerator temperatures from 36 degrees to 46 degrees Fahrenheit.
Janssen is already testing a two-dose regimen for the vaccine and this could increase effectiveness, said Fauci.
“Let’s see what that shows. It can increase to 90%,” he said. “Gee, if you were 72 on a single dose, you’d think you’d be just fine with a boost.”
The US federal government has signed a contract to buy 100 million doses of the vaccine and the company has been making doses for months, predicting that it would work and win the FDA’s US.
A fourth vaccine is also struggling to enter the mix on the American market. Novavax, based in Maryland, released preliminary data on Thursday, showing that its vaccine candidate was 89% effective in tests in Britain. And AstraZeneca is also completing Phase 3 clinical trials of its vaccine.
The Janssen vaccine is made slightly differently from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which use raw genetic material called messenger RNA.
This is a viral vector vaccine. It uses a common cold virus called adenovirus 26, which has been weakened so that it does not replicate in the body. It is designed to carry genetic material from the virus’s peak protein – this is the part the virus uses to cling to the cells it targets.
The vaccine causes muscle cells in the arm to produce these pieces of spike protein. The immune system recognizes them as strangers and creates a defense, so when a real virus tries to infect, the body is ready to fight it.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Elizabeth Cohen and Keri Enriquez contributed to this story.