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An advisory panel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted unanimously Sunday to recommend Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine for widespread use, and US officials said initial shipments would begin Sunday.
Providing a final clearance for the vaccine one day after it was cleared by U.S. regulators, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 12-0 to recommend the J&J vaccine as appropriate for older Americans. of 18 years. There was one abstention due to prior conflicts of interest.
“We believe that today’s recommendation from the CDC to begin using our vaccine as part of the US national immunization program will add a critical tool in the fight against COVID-19,” said Paul Stoffels, Scientific Director of J&J. , it’s a statement.
“We are going to get these doses out the door as soon as they are available to ensure that the vaccines get to arms as quickly as possible,” a senior US official told reporters Sunday night, adding that deliveries were expected. initials for Tuesday.
State and local public health authorities will use guidance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC to administer the first 3.9 million doses, which will be shipped through distribution partner McKesson Corp.
Senior administration officials acknowledged that vaccination rates among minorities “were not where we ultimately want them to be,” but measures have been put in place to increase those figures. Federal officials were closely monitoring the distribution by states to ensure it was equitable, they said.
Officials urged everyone in the United States to get vaccinated as soon as it was their turn, and said black and brown Americans should understand that safeguards had been put in place after past instances of discrimination in the medical field.
“Time is certainly of the essence. Getting vaccinated saves lives, ”said one of the officials.
The ACIP has played an important role in guiding states on how to allocate low doses, although states themselves have the final say in how they allocate injections.
CDC epidemiologist Dr. Sara Oliver said during a presentation Sunday that there are still no studies comparing J & J’s vaccine directly to the other approved vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc, but that all vaccines were highly effective in reducing hospitalizations and deaths.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are based on new messenger RNA technology, showed higher efficacy rates in trials that used two doses compared to J & J’s single injection vaccine. However, direct comparison is difficult because the trials had different objectives and J&J were conducted while new, more contagious variants of the virus circulated.
Oliver also said there was not enough data to know whether the safety or efficacy of vaccines could be compromised by pre-existing conditions that compromise a person’s immune system.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky approved the panel’s recommendations.
Ms. Oliver and senior US officials said that J & J’s vaccine implementation could help ensure equitable distribution of vaccines to underserved communities.
The J&J injection will be the only single-dose COVID vaccine available in the United States. It is also the easiest to ship and store as it can be kept in a refrigerator instead of a freezer.
J&J expects to ship more than 20 million doses by the end of March and 100 million by mid-year, enough to vaccinate nearly a third of Americans. – Carl O’Donnell / Reuters
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