Johnson & Johnson is forging plans to create a second-generation coronavirus vaccine, a spokesman confirmed to Fox News.
“We are studying the development of a second-generation vaccine and will leverage our learnings with our current COVID-19 program to accelerate these efforts,” wrote a spokesman for Janssen in part. “We will continue to do everything we can to help end the pandemic and will share more information as it becomes available.”
Efforts take place in parallel as the company works to increase manufacturing capacity to supply its existing coronavirus vaccine worldwide.
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“The results of our phase 3 ENSEMBLE study showed protection against multiple variants in circulation, and we are continually working to develop and extensively activate our manufacturing capabilities to deliver our single injection COVID-19 vaccine worldwide,” wrote the port -voice. “We will also continue to test the effectiveness of our vaccine against new and emerging variants.”
The ENSEMBLE study previously indicated that the now authorized single-injection coronavirus vaccine was 72% effective in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 in the U.S., but dropped to 66% in a larger study conducted worldwide. The last stage of the study involved 43,783 participants.
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J&J previously expected its vaccine candidate to be effective against variant strains.
“Protection was generally consistent across all races, age groups, including adults over 60 years of age (N = 13,610) and across all variants and regions studied, including South Africa, where almost all cases of COVID-19 (95%) were due to infection with a SARS-CoV-2 strain of strain B.1.351 “, says an earlier version.