“This is really great news,” said Dr. Esther Choo, professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, to CNN on Saturday. “The Johnson & Johnson vaccine … performs very well, still has an excellent safety profile and has the added benefit of tremendous convenience.”
“It has been a big challenge to get even a single dose for many people,” said Choo. “Signing up for a second, keeping track of it, getting transportation, is just a big barrier for many Americans and, of course, in hard-to-reach places, including rural America, was a huge logistical challenge.”
The J&J vaccine will ‘dramatically’ increase vaccine availability
More than 23.6 million people received both doses of the vaccine. That is about 7.1% of the US population.
“The J&J vaccine, which is easier to transport and store … will dramatically increase our vaccine availability,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN on Saturday. “It’s a big, big deal.”
About 3.9 million doses will be available to order immediately, according to Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials – which could add about 25% more to the vaccination capacity of the county. Covid-19 for the states.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox told CNN that he expects the state to receive “several thousand doses” in the coming days.
“We expect shots to come next week,” said Cox. “We know that they have about 4 million doses available now, ready to be distributed. They will start dispatching them, we believe, on Monday. We should take these injections, we think , on Wednesday. And gun injections on Thursday and Friday. This is very important for our state and for Americans around the world. ”
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice said on Friday that an emergency use permit for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would mean the state will receive about 15,000 more doses later this week.
Now is not the time to abandon security measures
While the third emergency use authorization for a Covid-19 vaccine may be more good news, health officials have repeatedly warned that now is definitely not the time to abandon the security measures that work to combat the spread of the virus.
And the declines that were occurring in case numbers and hospitalizations now appear to be “stabilizing” at these high levels, warned CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, during a briefing at the White House on Friday.
“In recent weeks, cases and hospitalizations in the United States have decreased since the beginning of January and deaths have decreased in the past week,” she said. “But the most recent data suggest that these declines may be stopping, potentially stabilizing at an even very high number. We at the CDC see this as a very worrying change in trajectory.”
Experts have warned that another Covid-19 outbreak could occur in a few weeks, this time fueled by variants of the virus. Of particular concern is the highly contagious variant B.1.1.7 identified for the first time in the UK, which the CDC estimates will be the most prevalent in the US next month.
“The CDC has sounded the alarm about the continued spread of variants in the United States, predicting that variants, such as variant B.1.1.7, which is believed to be about 50% more transmissible than the wild type strain, would become the predominant variant of Covid-19 in mid-March, “said Walensky during Friday’s briefing. “We may now be seeing the initial effects of these variants on the most recent data.”
CNN’s Maggie Fox, Jacqueline Howard, Nicholas Neville, Jen Christensen and Christopher Rios contributed to this report.