Alex Gorsky, President & CEO of Johnson & Johnson, celebrates the 75th anniversary of his company’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange on September 17, 2019.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
People may need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 annually, as well as seasonal flu vaccines, over the next few years, Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky told CNBC on Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, as [the virus] spreads can also mutate, “he told CNBC’s Meg Tirrell during a Healthy Returns Spotlight event.” Each time it changes, it’s almost like another click on the dial, so to speak, where we can see another variant, another mutation that can impact your ability to protect yourself from antibodies or to have a different type of response not just to one therapy, but also to a vaccine. “
Public health officials and infectious disease experts said there is a high likelihood that Covid-19 will become an endemic disease, meaning it will be present in communities all the time, although probably at lower levels than now. Health officials will have to continually watch for new variants of the virus so that scientists can produce vaccines to fight them, say medical experts.
Gorsky’s comment came after J&J said it had applied for an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its coronavirus vaccine. Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses administered three to four weeks apart, J&J requires only one dose, facilitating logistics for healthcare professionals.
American officials and Wall Street analysts are eagerly awaiting authorization for the J&J vaccine, which could happen as early as this month. President Joe Biden is trying to accelerate the pace of vaccinations in the United States and experts say his government will need a variety of drugs and vaccines to defeat the virus, which killed more than 450,000 Americans last year, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University .
The Department of Health and Human Services announced in August that it had reached an agreement with Janssen, a pharmaceutical subsidiary of J&J, worth approximately $ 1 billion for 100 million doses of its vaccine. The deal gives the federal government the option to order an additional 200 million doses, according to the announcement.
Gorsky told CNBC that the company’s first priority is to work with the FDA to obtain US authorization. He said J&J is working “full steam ahead” on vaccine manufacturing, adding that the company is “extremely confident” that it will reach its goal of delivering 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine to the United States by the end of June.
“We will keep our commitments and, at the same time, do everything we can to speed up production safely and effectively,” he said, adding that people are “very anxious” to get a single injection against the virus.
J&J is also working on a two-dose vaccine against coronavirus, he said. The company expects data from two clinical trial vaccines in the second half of 2021, he said.