Today, Thursday, the European Medicines Agency authorized the use of the “Johnson & Johnson” vaccine against the Coronavirus, with a recommendation that those over the age of 18 receive it.
Thus, “Johnson & Johnson” became the fourth vaccine approved in the European Union, after “Pfizer”, “Moderna” and “AstraZeneca”, and the first vaccine consisting of a single dose.
Earlier, the United States, Canada and Bahrain agreed to use “Johnson & Johnson”, while the vaccine is still being studied in South Africa.
During a press conference today, Thursday, the director of the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board expected that the “Johnson & Johnson” vaccine would be effective “against all known variants of the new Corona virus.”
The results of an experiment involving 44,000 volunteers show that the effectiveness of “Johnson & Johnson” is an average of 66% in preventing moderate and severe cases of corona worldwide, while the data also indicated that it is well tolerated in general.
In South Africa, where 95% of the cases in the trial were caused by infection with the highly contagious Coronavirus variant B.1.351, the vaccine showed 64% efficacy 28 days after vaccination.
In the United States, the level of protection provided by the vaccine is 72%, and in Latin American countries, 66%.
About 34% of the trial participants were over the age of 60.
Johnson & Johnson expects to produce at least 1 billion doses of its vaccine in 2021 and has signed supply deals for most of them.
Source: “Reuters”