March 13 – Thousands of doses of a new, single-dose COVID-19 vaccine developed by drug company Johnson & Johnson arrived in Alaska this week, with many Alaska health leaders pointing to data showing that the new vaccine is a safe and effective way. option to protect Alaskans from the coronavirus.
“This is another tool in the toolbox to help us fight COVID-19,” said Dr. Bob Onders, administrator of the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, said Friday.
“The fact that it can be stored and transported in a standard refrigerator and that it requires only one dose offers Alaskans more flexibility,” said Dr. Anne Zink, chief medical officer of the state, said in a statement.
The J&J vaccine is the third to receive an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Alaska’s March vaccine award included 8,900 doses of Johnson & Johnson, in addition to more than 100,000 first doses of Moderna and Pfizer vaccine en route to the state this month.
Alaska became the first state this week to remove vaccine requirements by opening appointments to anyone 16 or older living or working in the state – a move that was possible in part because of the extra vaccine this week arrived in the state.
By Friday, more than a quarter of Alaskans had received one vaccine, making Alaska one of the most vaccinated countries in the country.
As the new vaccine begins to arrive this week, Alaskans are already being vaccinated with the single-shot option.
The J&J vaccine, like the other two available shots, “has been shown to be effective on the things we really want to prevent: hospitalization and serious complications, including death from COVID-19,” Onders said. “What the CDC recommends is that everyone get the first vaccine available to them, and that’s also what we recommend.”
Onders disputed Friday an open one published this week by a public health doctor in Seattle, who expressed doubts about clinical trial data, which he said apparently suggests the new vaccine might not work as well for Alaska Natives.
Vendors said the opinion is worrying, misleading and is not supported by data.
“The number of Alaska natives and American Indians in the study and about which the author comments is too small to conclude whether the vaccine is better for one group of people compared to another group,” Onders said. . “It’s unfortunate that there are underrepresentations of Alaska natives and Native Americans in the data, but what we do know is that it generally works very well in all groups.”
In the J&J clinical trials, although there were only a small number of residents of Alaska and the Indians in America, there were still lower levels of serious complications of the virus and lower rates of hospitalizations and deaths due to the virus, Onders said.
“The other point is that he draws from the experience in Brazil, with indigenous peoples in South America, and concludes that it may have an impact on the effectiveness for Alaska natives and American Indians,” Onders said. said. “But we do not really know. And I think Brazil is a unique situation where there are different variants in Brazil that can change the outcomes.”
“It is worrying when people create unfounded hesitation in a situation where we know the more people are vaccinated, the better we will be at it,” Onders added.
A joint refutation of the original version was recently published in Indian Country Today by a coalition of indigenous health experts.
“The proposition that one vaccine does not provide protection against COVID-19 for a particular racial group has no plausible biological basis and is not supported by the available evidence,” the second opinion said.
Although clinical trials have found that the J&J vaccine has slightly lower efficacy than the two mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, researchers said it was difficult to compare these studies because at different points in time. the pandemic was done.
The flexibility of the J&J vaccine “could make it easier to keep it longer in town clinics because they do not have ultra-cold freezers, but do have refrigerators,” Onders said.