Virginia public health officials are bracing for Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine to be cleared soon, potentially allowing more immunization supplies to arrive in the state as early as next week.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended Wednesday that the drugmaker’s version of the coronavirus vaccine be issued an emergency use authorization. The agency’s evaluation indicated the shot is about 66% effective at preventing moderate cases of COVID-19 and 85% effective at preventing severe illnesses that lead to hospitalization and death. The report also said the vaccine was safe.
If federal regulators give the shot a green light, it will be the third vaccine in the United States’ fight against the pandemic, joining Pfizer and Moderna’s products, which have been put into people’s arms since December. The latter two vaccines require booster shots three or four weeks after the first doses, while Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is just one dose.
Gov. Ralph Northam said the addition of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine will help the state inoculate its 8.5 million people more quickly and “get closer to” herd immunity. That’s a term used to describe a level of vaccinated people in a community that can help protect the unvaccinated, too, because the virus has significantly reduced opportunities to spread.
“All of these vaccines are shown to reduce serious illness and death from the virus,” he said at a news conference Wednesday. “People ask me what’s the best one to get. Well, I would sum that up by saying the best vaccine is the one you get.”
Virginia estimates it will receive about 50,000 doses per week from Johnson & Johnson. That could significantly increase vaccinations throughout the state, boosting supplies from 160,000 to 210,000 weekly. That allocation doesn’t include the 52,000 doses that will be shipped to various pharmacy locations in Virginia each week through a separate federal program.
Public health officials point to two advantages of the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine: It only requires one shot and it can be stored for three months in a refrigerator, unlike the other vaccines that require colder storage and traveling temperatures. That makes the new vaccine better for reaching transient people or those who live in harder-to-reach places, especially rural areas.
But, at least on the state level, there is concern among some health experts that reports of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being less effective than Pfizer and Moderna will give the product a bad rap.
Tests showed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were 95% effective at protection against symptomatic coronavirus infections. If people perceive the Johnson & Johnson shot to be inferior, that could contribute to feelings of unfairness based on who is offered which one.
At a meeting of the Virginia Vaccine Advisory Workgroup this month, Dr. Danny Avula, state vaccine coordinator, said public health officials could be exposed to criticism for where they send those resources.
“How do we make decisions about where Johnson & Johnson should be prioritized, and how do we communicate that and engage communities in the appropriate way so that it’s not misunderstood or misrepresented?” he said to the group.
The FDA is expected to make a final decision on the new vaccine Friday.
So far, about 1.2 million Virginians have received at least one dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, and 543,000 have been fully inoculated.
Part of the state’s vaccine advisory workgroup met Feb. 15 to discuss the impending Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and said the maker also is researching whether giving people a second shot eight weeks later increases its effectiveness at warding off COVID-19. That study began in November and could have findings as early as May, said Joshua Crawford, head of clinical pharmacy services at Bon Secours Mercy Health.
“It’ll probably be a one-dose series for the time being,” Crawford said during the meeting. “But what I’ve been trying to tell people is that it might become a two-dose one, maybe not for everybody, but for certain populations.”
Johnson & Johnson tested its single-dose vaccine in 44,000 adults in the U.S. and other countries. The trials showed protection against the coronavirus began to emerge about two weeks after the shots were given. By four weeks, there were no hospitalizations or deaths in the vaccinated group compared with 16 hospitalizations and seven deaths in the control group that received a placebo shot.
The FDA said effectiveness and safety were consistent across racial groups, including Black and Latino participants.
Like other coronavirus vaccines, the main side effects of the Johnson & Johnson shot are pain at the injection site and flu-like fever, fatigue and headache. No study participant experienced the severe allergic reaction, known as anaphylaxis, that is a rare risk of the other COVID-19 shots, although one person experienced a less serious reaction.
Johnson & Johnson told Congress it expects to be able to ship 20 million doses by the end of March and 100 million by the end of June.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Elisha Sauers, elisha.sauers@pilotonline.com, 757-222-3864
