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(CNN) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light to Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use on Saturday, another historic milestone that, according to experts, it will help bring the country closer to a return to normalcy.
“This is great news,” Dr. Esther Choo, a professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, told CNN on Saturday. “The Johnson & Johnson vaccine… works very well, it still has an outstanding safety profile and it also has the added benefit of great comfort.”
An FDA analysis found the vaccine to be safe and effective. Can be stored at simple refrigerator temperatures. And unlike the other two vaccines already licensed in the US, Johnson & Johnson’s only requires one dose, which Choo says is a great achievement.
“It has been a great challenge to give even a single dose to many people,” said Choo. “Signing up for a second, following up, getting a ride, it’s just a huge barrier for a lot of Americans and then of course in the hardest to reach places, including rural America, it’s just been a huge logistical challenge.
On Sunday, advisers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet to discuss and vote on whether the agency should approve the distribution of the vaccine and could also designate priority groups. Then the CDC director must give the final go-ahead.
“Having a third vaccine that meets the expectations of a safety and efficacy (emergency use authorization) to prevent serious diseases and death from covid-19 brings us one step closer to protecting the American public, ahead of viral variants worrisome, and find a way out of the pandemic, “said the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, in a statement.
J&J vaccine will ‘dramatically’ increase vaccine availability
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also help increase the number of vaccines available to Americans as health officials rush to prevent another possible variant-driven COVID-19 surge.
So far, more than 48.4 million Americans have received at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, CDC data shows.
More than 23.6 million people have received both doses of a vaccine. That’s about 7.1% of the US population.
“The J&J vaccine, which is easier to transport and store … will dramatically increase our availability of vaccines,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN on Saturday. It’s a great, great achievement.
About 3.9 million doses will be available to order immediately, according to Lori Tremmel Freeman, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, which could add about 25% more covid vaccination capacity. -19 for states.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox told CNN that he expects the state to receive “several thousand doses” in the next few days.
“We expect injections next week,” Cox said. “We know that they now have around 4 million doses ready to go. We believe they will start shipping on Monday. We think we should get those injections on Wednesday. And the injections given on Thursday and Friday. That is very important to our state and to Americans everywhere. “
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said Friday that an emergency use authorization for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would mean the state will receive about 15,000 more doses this week.
This is no time to abandon security measures
While the third emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine may be good news, health officials have repeatedly warned that this is definitely not the time to abandon security measures that work to combat the spread of the virus.
That’s because while Covid-19 numbers across the country may have declined, they are still terribly high. Tens of thousands of new infections are added to the nation’s count daily. More than 48,800 people remain hospitalized with the virus, according to the COVID Tracking Project. And this month alone, more than 63,800 virus-related deaths have been reported in the US.
And the declines that were taking place in the numbers of cases and hospitalizations now appear to be “stabilizing” at these high levels, warned CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky during a briefing at the White House on Friday.
“In recent weeks, cases and hospital admissions in the United States have been declining since the beginning of January and deaths had decreased in the last week,” he said. “But the most recent data suggests that these declines may be stagnant, possibly stabilizing at a still very high number. We at CDC consider this to be a very troubling change in trajectory. “
Experts have warned that another wave of covid-19 could be just a few weeks away, this time fueled by variants of the virus. Of particular concern is the highly contagious variant B.1,1.7, first identified in the UK, which CDC estimates will be predominant in the US next month.
“The CDC has sounded the alarm about the continued spread of variants in the United States, predicting that variants, such as variant B.1,1.7, which is believed to be approximately 50% more transmissible than the wild-type strain, will become in the predominant variant of covid-19 in mid-March, “Walensky said during the briefing on Friday. “We may now be seeing the initial effects of these variants in the more recent data.”
CNN’s Maggie Fox, Jacqueline Howard, Nicholas Neville, Jen Christensen, and Christopher Rios contributed to this report.
