The vaccine from the pharmaceutical company Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), based on a viral vector, which has been approved today by the European Medicines Agency, is the first that requires a single dose and, like other formulations, can be stored and distributed at a temperature between two and eight degrees.
The US pharmaceutical formula has a vaccine efficacy of over 85% in preventing the development of severe covid-19 and prevents one hundred percent of deaths, as none have been recorded in the treatment group during the trials.
In the global results, which include all types of population, ages, countries and strains, the efficacy to prevent moderate to severe disease is close to 70%, indicates to Efe Alberto Borobia, coordinator of the Central Clinical Research Unit and clinical trials at the Hospital Universitario La Paz (Madrid), which participated in the tests.
For the South African and Brazilian variants, the data indicate that efficacy is maintained in preventing severe disease.
Borobia explains that for the British variant there are no data, because in the clinical trials there was no population from that country, but other preliminary “suggest” that the formulation is also active against it.
The clinical trials included more than 34% of subjects over 60 years of age, in whom the efficacy “is also very good”, which is why they consider that “it can be very useful to immunize the elderly population”.
The side effects are the same as flu vaccination can have, for example – signals – pain at the site of the puncture.
A single-dose vaccine that can be stored and distributed at refrigerator temperature and can be out of it for twelve hours “will greatly facilitate the vaccination process,” says Borobia, since two of the formulas used so far, Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna require of conservation below zero.
Regarding the single dose presentation, it indicates that early phase studies found that “the potential vaccine efficacy with a single administration was high enough” for a pandemic emergency situation.
The Janssen vaccine uses a human adenovirus, that of the common cold, which is genetically modified so that it cannot replicate and so that it expresses in its membrane the spike (S) protein of the virus, which our body will recognize as foreign and will create anti-overlaps.
At the moment, “there are no conclusive data” on whether Janssen’s preparation also prevents infections (studies of the vaccines approved so far have focused on the prevention of disease and deaths), but Borobia indicates that “there is some very preliminary sign that he might “avoid them.”
Phase II and III clinical trials of this vaccine, which were approved for use in the United States on February 27, were developed in hospitals in several countries, including eight Spanish ones.