Vaccine manufacturers are examining whether boost doses can provide better protection against coronavirus variants, White House senior adviser to Covid Response Andy Slavitt said in an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday.
The White House official said Johnson and Johnson are already studying a second dose of his Covid-19 vaccine, noting that Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech, which currently have vaccines in the United States, “intend to continue. to go with updating their vaccines. and, if necessary, create boosters in progress if there are additional mutants, as is likely to be the case. ‘
Johnson & Johnson said they are investigating whether to reload the Covid-19 vaccine to address the potential impact of new strains. In November, the company announced the launch of a large-scale phase 3 trial for a two-dose regimen of its coronavirus vaccine.
“If you have the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, can you get another vaccine later?” Slavitt said. ‘And I’ll give you two parts quickly in the answer. One is: Johnson and Johnson, people may know, are currently evaluating whether – how their two-dose vaccine performs – in other words, with their own booster. So, pending the results on that, pending what the FDA has to say if the vaccine is approved in the first place, there will be a second shot of Johnson and Johnson. ‘
“Broadly speaking, can you mix and match? If you have one, can you take another later? And the answer is, try to remember which one you had, because that’s what was tested … but if you forgot, do not panic. “You can take another one and tell the CDC that it’s fine in that case,” he continued.
The Independent Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will meet on Feb. 26 to consider whether a single dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine should be recommended for emergency consent.
Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine Covid-19 has been shown to be 66% effective in preventing moderate and severe diseases in a global Phase 3 trial, but 85% effective against serious diseases, the company announced earlier. .
‘While a potentially safe and effective single-dose preventative COVID-19 vaccine can have significant benefits, especially in a pandemic, Janssen’s COVID-19 vaccine program is designed to be extremely thorough and science-driven. As such, we are investigating multiple doses and dosing programs to evaluate their long-term effectiveness, ”reads a statement from J&J in November.
Slavitt also said the government is working to ensure that the vaccines will work against variants.
“We are currently testing in vitro. … The good news to start with is the most important type that came here, the B.1.1.7, the vaccines work well for – the Pfizer and the Moderna. The South African, who is close to the Brazilian … they are … less effective, but above a threshold, ‘Slavitt said.