Johnson & Johnson Says Its Single-dose Covid-19 Vaccine Is 66% Effective In Large Trial

Johnson & Johnson Says Its Single-dose Covid-19 Vaccine Is 66% Effective In Large Trial Johnson & Johnson on Friday said...

Johnson & Johnson Says Its Single-dose Covid-19 Vaccine Is 66% Effective In Large Trial

Johnson & Johnson on Friday said its single-dose vaccine was 72% effective in preventing COVID-19 in the United States but a lower rate of 66% was observed globally in the large trial conducted across three continents and against multiple variants.

In the trial of nearly 44,000 volunteers, the level of protection against moderate and severe COVID-19 was 66% in Latin America and just 57% in South Africa, where a particularly worrying variant of the novel coronavirus is circulating.

Those results compare to the high bar set by two authorized vaccines from Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc, which were around 95% effective in preventing symptomatic illness in pivotal trials when given in two doses. Those trials, however, were conducted mainly in the United States and before the broad spread of new variants now under the spotlight.

J&J’s main study goal was the prevention of moderate to severe COVID-19, and the vaccine was 85% effective in stopping severe disease and preventing hospitalization across all geographies and against multiple variants 28 days after immunization.