The Johnson & Johnson single-injection Covid-19 vaccine has been shown to be 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe disease in a global Phase 3 trial, but 85% is effective against serious disease. announced the company on Friday.
The vaccine was 72% effective against moderate to severe disease in the U.S., the company said.
It’s a surprising difference from the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and can pause people who don’t know which vaccine or when it can be taken. Vaccines that already exist on the market in the U.S. are approximately 95% effective overall against symptomatic Covid-19, with perhaps even higher efficacy against severe cases.
Experts say the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, developed by its Janssen vaccine arm, will still be useful against the pandemic in the United States and around the world, even if the single-dose vaccine does not become the first choice for many.
For Johnson & Johnson, the effectiveness against moderate and severe varied from country to country: 72% in the United States, 66% in Latin America, and 57% in South Africa. This was measured from one month after shooting.
In South Africa, 95% of the trial cases were due to a variant known as B.1.351, which is known to be more contagious and carries mutations that can make the virus less susceptible to the immune response. of antibodies, including antibodies caused by vaccination.
With this variant, “we have lower protection against milder forms of Covid than in the United States, where there were more typical circulating variants,” CNN chief medical officer Dr. Mathai Mammen, global head of research and development at the company. Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Even those who obtained moderate cases of Covid-19 at trial tended to develop a milder course and fewer symptoms, he added.
But for Mammen, the key outcome was the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing serious illness, regardless of variant or age group.
“In all geographies, in all variants, we see 85% protection” against serious diseases, he said. This trend increased over time, with no serious cases in the vaccinated group after day 49, according to the company.
From one month after the shooting, all hospitalizations and deaths occurred in the placebo group.
The results are based on an analysis of more than 44,000 participants in eight countries, with a total of 468 cases of Covid-19 divided among those who received the vaccine or placebo. The results have not been published in an expert-reviewed journal, but the company said it plans to do so “in the coming weeks.”
Johnson & Johnson is expected to apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration next week for emergency use authorization, which Mammen said could come in late February.