Less can be more when it comes to vaccinating a coronavirus.
Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine could have an edge on the shots of Pfizer and Moderna – even if it’s still a few weeks of approval in the US, Wall Street analysts told The Post.
This is because the one-time jabs are likely to be more easily spread across the country than the competitors’ two-dose regimes that are slowly entering American arms.
“They are not that late yet, given the fact that they want to go for a single-dose vaccine, which is definitely going to be more convenient,” CFRA analyst Sel Hardy told The Post. “It has clear advantages in terms of logistics.”
J&J expects to release data from its large-scale vaccine study at the end of January and ask the staff to clean the shot for emergency use shortly thereafter. That would put it about two months behind Pfizer and Moderna, which received emergency permits in mid-December.
J&J is also studying a two-dose regimen, but only one dose generated an immune response in more than 90 percent of participants in an early clinical trial.
This means that every dose the company produces in New Jersey can vaccinate one person, which could double its impact compared to the Pfizer and Moderna jabs, according to Jeylan Mammadova of Third Bridge.
“When I say I have the capacity to produce a billion doses, it’s a billion people you vaccinate” with a single vaccine, “said Mammadova, the investment firm’s global healthcare team leader. “If I make the same statement with Moderna and Pfizer, it’s only half.”
There is another important difference: the uptake of J&J triggers an immune response in the body by providing a gene for the coronavirus proteins through a cold virus that cannot make the recipient sick. This is a different method than the so-called messenger RNA found in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
The J&J technology already has a strong record – it was used to develop the company’s Ebola vaccine, which was approved by European Union regulators last July. According to analysts, this could reassure people who are skeptical about the brand new COVID-19 shots.
“Even though they’re late, some people think, ‘OK, they’re using a traditional vaccination platform,’ ‘Hardy said. “There could also be a trust issue, a perception problem, I would say, that could play to their advantage.”
What’s more, J & J’s vaccine is expected to have a longer shelf life than that of Moderna, and that it does not require ultra-cold storage like Pfizer, which must be kept at 94 degrees Fahrenheit to be effective.
J&J estimates that the vaccine will remain stable for at least three months at standard refrigerator temperatures and for two years in a freezer at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Moderns, on the other hand, can keep up to just 30 days in the fridge and up to six months if frozen.
Despite these apparent benefits, analysts do not expect the vaccine to have a major impact on J & J’s core. The firm said it plans to make the shot available on a “nonprofit basis for emergency pandemic,” and has received about $ 454 million in research and development funding from the U.S. government.
J&J will eventually also have to go head-to-head with other single-dose COVID vaccines from companies such as Merck, which are further behind in development.
‘I do not think it makes a difference financially [J&J] even if it’s a fantastic win, “Sam Fazeli, senior pharmaceutical analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, told The Post.” The question is whether this is something they will be able to earn outside of the pandemic. “