The results of an international phase 3 trial of the Johnson & Johnson single-dose COVID-19 vaccine show that it is 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe symptoms of COVID-19. The vaccine was 85% effective in preventing COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths.
The vaccine has long been expected to change the game in the global fight against the pandemic, because it requires only one dose, can be manufactured in billions of doses and requires only standard refrigeration.
“A single vaccine is considered by the World Health Organization to be the best option in pandemic settings, improving access, distribution and compliance. Eighty-five percent effectiveness in preventing serious COVID-19 disease and preventing COVID-related medical diseases -19 interventions will potentially protect hundreds of millions of people from serious and fatal COVID-19 results, “said Paul Stoffels, MD, scientific director at Johnson & Johnson, in a company press release.
Excited with the data
Today, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the vaccine’s results during a pandemic briefing at the White House. He said he was excited by the data, which showed that the vaccine is 72% effective in preventing moderate to severe illness among study participants in the US, 66% in Latin American participants and 57% in South African participants 28 days after vaccination.
Fauci said it is not disheartening that the vaccine did not show 94% and 95% efficacy rates, like the phase 3 data from Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.
“When looking at the potential impact of serious illnesses, we now have an additional value-added vaccine candidate,” he said, noting that no hospitalizations or deaths were recorded among South African study participants who received the vaccine. Overall, the vaccine has proven to be 57% effective in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 in South Africa, where the dominant strain of the virus is variant B1351.
Johnson & Johnson, which developed the vaccine with its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, is expected to file an emergency use authorization request with the Food and Drug Administration next week. If approved, the vaccine would be available in the United States by the end of February.
As part of Operation War Speed, Johnson & Johnson is due to deliver 100 million doses to the US federal government by June 1.
Head of CDC: schools should be the first to open, the last to close
Also in today’s coronavirus briefing, the new Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, said the United States is still in a difficult situation with the virus, with states reporting four times more cases per day. The summer.
US officials reported 164,665 new COVID-19 cases and 3,872 deaths yesterday, according to Johns Hopkins’ COVID-19 tracker. In total, the US has 25,860,188 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 435,089 deaths.
Referring to previous CDC reports published this week that showed the limited spread of COVID-19 in schools, Walensky said that school environments do not appear to spread COVID-19 when mitigation strategies, including distance and wearing a mask, are followed .
But the spread of the community in some communities is still rampant, warned Walensky. In Texas, the state has exceeded 2 million cases this week. According Texas Tribune, Texas took 8 months to get the first million boxes and only 3 months to get the second million.
Walensky also said that the CDC has tracked more than 315 cases of variant B117 in 28 states. She said that while the United States does not perform as much genetic sequencing on virus samples as other countries, it would do little to prevent the spread of the variants once they are detected.
“Treat each case as if it were a variant,” she said. “The moment it is sequenced, our opportunity to track actual contact is gone.”
Rural areas see more vaccine
New data from Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina and Florida show that the highest vaccination rates per capita generally belong to less populous counties, according to Reuters.
Authorities in rural communities told Reuters that personal ties to constituents made it easier to overcome vaccine hesitation and identify those who can be vaccinated in advance. And unlike cities, rural areas have not been affected by online registration platforms that they have stopped using, and rural communities have set up vaccine clinics relatively easily.
As of Wednesday, 16 states had administered less than half the doses of the COVID-19 vaccine sent to them, according to a USA today analysis of CDC data. The CDC COVID Data Tracker shows 48,386,275 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been distributed in the country and 26,193,682 have been administered.
Today, the entire House said that the country vaccinated an average of 1.2 million people a day this week.