The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use on Saturday (Feb. 27), making it the third shot cleared for use in the country.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use on Saturday (Feb.27), making it the third shot cleared for use in the country. „The authorization of this vaccine expands the availability of vaccines, the best medical prevention method for COVID-19, to help us in the fight against this pandemic, which has claimed over half a million lives in the United States,“ Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement. An FDA analysis showed that the single-shot vaccine had a 72% overall efficacy rate in the U.S. and 64% in South Africa, where a highly-transmissible coronavirus variant is causing most new cases, The New York Times reported. The efficacy rate in South Africa is slightly higher than the company had estimated in a recent report, up by seven percentage points. In terms of protecting against severe disease, the vaccine showed 86% efficacy in the U.S. and 82% in South Africa, the Times reported. And the shot was „100 percent effective in preventing hospitalization and deaths, and that’s really what’s important,“ Dr. Nancy M. Bennett, a professor of medicine and public health sciences at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, told The Washington Post. „Those facts are the most important thing to recognize.
