Myles Udland, Julie Hyman, Brian Sozzi, and Anjalee Khemlani of Yahoo Finance discuss the latest news about the COVID-19 vaccine.
Video transcription
JULIE HYMAN: As promised during its earnings report, Johnson & Johnson has now released some vaccine data. Remember, this is a single injection vaccine. Our Anjalee Khemlani has been monitoring all vaccine developments. Tell us about the Johnson & Johnson participant here.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Yes. So what we got from this phase three trial is that the vaccine still offers strong protection. Therefore, it has 72% protection in the USA and 66% general protection. Now, remember, last year, at that time, we were looking to the FDA for answers on what strong protection means. And they responded with 50% and then increased it to 60%. So it is still within that range, which is what vaccine experts say will be useful.
Now, where there is some concern, of course, is that variant of South Africa. We know that the trials have taken place there. And they saw 57% protection there. But this is important to put in context. Johnson & Johnson pointing to the fact that yet, no matter what the overall effectiveness rate was, it still protected against serious illness. And if we remember, this is also a very strong point of the mRNA vaccines that are on the market now, which provide 100% protection. But Johnson & Johnson says 85% protection against serious illness. So this is very important. And 100% protection against hospitalization and death. Of course, this is a necessary end point.
Putting it all in context, of course, when we look in general at what the efficacy rates are, we know that mRNA vaccines were 94%, 95%. We also received news yesterday from Novavax with its UK variant. Sorry, with your vaccine trial in the UK, protected against the UK variant as well as against the South Africa variant. But you also saw a small reduction compared to the South African strain by about 60% compared with the general 89.3%.
So we are seeing similar numbers across the board in terms of what protection is. And we are seeing this continuing trend, a worrying trend, experts say, against the most virulent strain of South Africa’s B1351. So, all of that for now. We know that Johnson & Johnson will apply for emergency use authorization in early February, which is next week, as well as being prepared to launch the vaccine doses as soon as they are available with 100 million pledged to the US by the end of June . Back to you.
JULIE HYMAN: Thank you, Anjalee, thank you.