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+--- Thread: What you need to know about J&J’s newly authorized one-shot COVID-19 vaccine (/thread-9865.html)
What you need to know about J&J’s newly authorized one-shot COVID-19 vaccine - C C - Feb 28, 2021
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-19-johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-one-shot-fda-authorization
EXCERPTS: And then there were three: A single-shot vaccine is the latest weapon to join the battle against COVID-19 in the United States. On February 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave emergency use authorization for Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. South Africa is the only other country to OK Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine so far, though other countries are poised to follow suit.
The FDA determined that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine meets the criteria for safety and effectiveness and that there is clear evidence that it may prevent COVID-19, the agency said in a statement.
[...] On the one hand, people weary of struggling to set up not just one but two appointments to get the currently available double-dose vaccines may welcome one-stop shopping. And adding millions more vaccines to the pipeline should speed up efforts to get the vast majority of Americans protected.
But on the other hand, its efficacy results fall short of those reported for two shots of the mRNA vaccines made by Moderna (94.1 percent) and Pfizer (95 percent). In real-world situations, a single shot of Pfizer’s vaccine was 74 percent to 85 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations. In clinical trials, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was about 66 percent effective at preventing moderate and severe disease. Its efficacy rose to 85 percent when it came to preventing severe and critical cases requiring hospitalization.
Here’s what you need to know about the vaccine, which was developed by Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals:
How does it work? Researchers engineered a common cold virus called adenovirus 26 to carry instructions for making the coronavirus’s spike protein into human cells. The human cells make the viral protein, which goads the immune system to make antibodies and train immune cells to attack the coronavirus, should the person encounter it later.
[...] It may be unfair to directly compare the efficacy results. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was tested in the United States, South Africa, Brazil and other parts of Latin America when coronavirus variants that can escape some immune protection were circulating. Under the same conditions, the mRNA vaccines might be less effective, too.
This is also a single-shot vaccine. It’s efficacy is similar to that of a different two-dose adenovirus vaccine made by the University of Oxford and its partner AstraZeneca.
Johnson & Johnson has begun testing whether a second dose of its vaccine can boost efficacy. If a second dose improves efficacy, researchers worry that the new information could sow confusion [...] “If you bring out a single-dose vaccine … and later say that a second dose is clinically better enough that we recommend a second dose, you can see how that would be confusing,” Paul Offit...
Should I get the shot? Yes, the experts say. "We’re going to have to communicate effectively so people don’t feel they’re getting a second-rate product. It’s very good at what it does,” says Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C... (MORE - details)