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Johnson & Johnson Single-Shot Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Ready by June

Johnson & Johnson Single-Shot Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be Ready by June

There’s a new coronavirus vaccine that has the science community feeling hopeful.

Johnson & Johnson released Phase 3 trial data on Friday (January 29), showing that their vaccine – a single shot – is 66% effective at preventing symptomatic disease and 85% effective against severe illness, ABC reports.

A team of scientists at the company were “elated” by the results.

“We’re a single shot…and now we’ve produced data that say that our vaccine is highly effective, 85% effective against severe COVID, 100% effective against hospitalization or death,” Dr. Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D. and the global head of Janssen Research & Development said.

“We’ve had the objective of producing a vaccine for the world, that is easily used, is easily distributed and it works against preventing the form of COVID-19 that people care about,” he continued.

Volunteers experienced mild reactions after the shot, with less than 10% experiencing fever, according to their press release. The FDA will now evaluate the data in mid-to-late February. People could start receiving shots before the end of February if approved, and company said they can deliver 100 million doses to the U.S. by June, if the FDA gives the green light, via ABC.

The reason this vaccine differs from the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which offer roughly 95% efficacy rates against symptomatic disease, and near-perfect protection against severe illness, is that they both must be administered in two shots and have more complex storage requirements. They were also run before more variants of coronavirus became prominent.

“They did run the vaccine at a period that was simpler. These variants are particularly tricky as they can be more virulent [and] a little bit harder to protect from,” the doctor added.

This would be a more convenient, single-dose vaccine against the coronavirus, and one that doesn’t need to be frozen for shipping and long-term storage, like Pfizer’s and Moderna’s do.

All of these celebrities have received a vaccine already.

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Posted to: Coronavirus Vaccine