Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top immunologist, said on Friday that a third coronavirus vaccine will add a necessary tool to the nation’s pandemic arsenal, despite its lower rate of effectiveness in research trials.
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spoke about the Johnson & Johnson single injection vaccine, which is due to be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization as early as next week, during an interview on “Nightly News with Lester Holt “Friday.
“Protection against serious illness is very high,” he said.
The vaccine has a 72 percent effectiveness rate in preventing symptomatic Covid-19, Johnson & Johnson said earlier in the day. This compares to 95% for the Pfizer vaccine and 94% for the Modern version.
The J&J vaccine does not require the unusual refrigerated storage needed by others and only needs basic refrigeration, the company said. The other two also require a second shot.
“From a practical point of view,” said Fauci, “… keeping people out of the hospital and avoiding death – that’s added value.”
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use messenger RNA to teach the immune system how to fight the coronavirus. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses an inactivated adenovirus, a type of virus that causes the common cold, to do this.
Fauci is not interpreting the lowest effective rate much. In an earlier interview with the New York Press Club, he said, “Seventy-two percent would have been, ‘Wow'” had the J&J vaccine been introduced to the world before the others.
In fact, he said in the “Nightly News with Lester Holt”, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which he said did not produce hospitalizations during the tests, has its advantages.
“You can just keep it in the fridge,” he said. “It is relatively cheap. And the company can make billions of doses.”
He said the addition of a third vaccine to the American arsenal could not come soon, since inoculation will be the country’s most effective weapon against mutations, including the UK-affiliated version B.1.1.7 and a South African variant. .
The J&J vaccine, however, proved to be only 57% affective against the latter. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can be modified to target new variants, said Fauci.
Until the pandemic is under control, the virus will continue to mutate in an attempt to survive and thrive, said Fauci. Most Americans need to be vaccinated for normal life to return in the fall, he said.
“It is not a question of being able to,” said the doctor. “We have to do this.”
Lester Holt contributed.