By Dennis Pillion
Alabamians should not be hesitant to take Johnson & Johnson’s new COVID vaccine when it becomes available, even if the efficacy numbers are less impressive than the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said Thursday.
“This is a vaccine that prevents deaths and prevents even serious illness and hospitalization at exactly the same rate as the other vaccines,” Harris said. “And so, the best vaccine to take is the one that you have offered to you.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve an emergency use authorization for a third COVID vaccine, this one developed by Johnson & Johnson, in the coming days.
The J&J vaccine has some advantages over the other two as well. It requires only one dose, and does not need the same kind of deep-freeze storage as the other vaccines do.
While the reported efficacy of the J&J vaccine at preventing any kind of illness is around 72% — compared to 95% for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — Harris said the vaccine’s clinical trial data shows that it still protects recipients from severe COVID illness and death at the same rates as the other two.
“In terms of preventing serious illness and hospitalization and in preventing death, they’re all three equivalent, they’re all three, in fact, identical,” Harris said. “No one who got J&J vaccine died from COVID. And, in fact, no one who got J&J vaccine had a serious allergic reaction like we’ve seen with the mRNA vaccines.”
What is efficacy?
The term efficacy is used roughly to mean effectiveness, but there are many misconceptions about what it actually means.
According to the Pfizer clinical trial data, in a trial that involved more than 43,000 participants, only eight people tested positive for COVID after receiving the two-dose vaccine, compared to 162 in the placebo group. The researchers then calculated that the shots reduced participants’ chances of getting COVID by 95%.
Some of the J&J trials were also conducted in South Africa, where a new, more transmissible variant was highly prevalent, so just looking at the efficacy numbers may not be a true apples-to-apples comparison.
How much, how soon?
Harris said he does not have any information on how much J&J vaccine Alabama will receive when and if the emergency use authorization is granted, but it may take longer to begin the rollout.
Because vaccine allocations are based on population, Harris said Alabama generally receives about 1.5% of the amount made available to the whole country, or 15,000 doses per million manufactured.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had ramped up production and had begun plans to ship doses to states before their emergency use authorizations were granted, but Harris said that hasn’t happened yet with J&J.
“We do know J&J vaccine is not going to be prepositioned in states ready to go the way that the Pfizer and Moderna products were,” Harris said. J&J told Congress this week that it expected to provide 20 million doses by the end of March and 100 million by summer.