Alabamians should not be reluctant to take Johnson & Johnson’s new COVID vaccine if it’s available, even if the efficacy is less impressive than the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, Drs. Scott Harris, state health officer, said.
“It’s a vaccine that prevents deaths and even serious illnesses and hospitalizations are exactly the same as the other vaccines,” Harris said. “And so, the best vaccine to take is the one you offered.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve a third-year COVID vaccine, developed by Johnson & Johnson, in the coming days.
The J&J vaccine also has some advantages over the other two. It requires only one dose and does not require the same type of freezer as the other vaccines.
While the reported efficacy of the J&J vaccine in preventing any type of disease is around 72% – compared to 95% for the Pfizer and Modern vaccines – Harris said that the clinical trial data of the vaccine show that it is still recipients protect against severe COVID disease and die at the same rate as the other two.
“In terms of preventing serious illness and hospitalization and preventing death, all three are equal, that’s actually all three,” Harris said. ‘Nobody who got J & J vaccine died of COVID. And actually, no one who got a J&J vaccine had a severe allergic reaction like we saw with the mRNA vaccines. ‘
And in a situation where there are not enough vaccines to go around, Harris said this third option is a welcome tool to get more people vaccinated and reduce the spread of the disease.
“Please do not buy for them and please do not wait because you think one person is better than another,” Harris said.
What is efficiency?
The term efficiency is roughly used to mean effectiveness, but there are many misconceptions about what it actually means.
For example, some may assume that if the Pfizer vaccine shows 95% efficacy, that 5% of the people taking it still have COVID. This is not correct.
According to the Pfizer clinical trial data, only eight people in a trial involving more than 43,000 participants tested positive for COVID after receiving the two-dose vaccine, compared with 162 in the placebo group. The researchers then calculated that the shots reduced the chances of participants getting COVID by 95%.
Some of the J&J trials were also conducted in South Africa, where a new, more transferable variant was very common, so it is not a real comparison between apples and apples to look at the efficiency numbers.
How much, how soon?
Harris said he has no information on how much J & J vaccine Alabama will receive when and if the emergency permit is granted, but it could take longer to get started.
He said he had seen media reports that J&J had between two and three million doses ready to ship, but that the government or J&J had not been given a word on what to expect.
Because the allocation of vaccines is population-based, Harris said Alabama typically receives about 1.5% of the amount made available nationwide, or 15,000 doses per million produced.
The Pfizer and Modern vaccines increased production and began planning doses to states before granting emergency use, but Harris said that has not yet happened with J&J.
“We do know that J&J vaccine is not going to be pre-positioned in the countries, as the Pfizer and Moderna products were,” Harris said.
J&J told Congress this week that it is expected to provide 20 million doses by the end of March and 100 million by the summer.