A special committee will meet on Friday to discuss the vaccine; here’s what you need to know.
On Friday, a special FDA committee will review the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine and decide whether to recommend it for Emergency Use Authorization. The committee members include academics, physicians, and government employees who are experts in the field of infectious diseases and vaccines. In an eight-hour meeting on February 26th, the committee members will discuss issues like how effective the vaccine is and if there are any side effects. At the end of the meeting, the committee will vote to decide if the vaccine should be recommended to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization. If they vote yes, the FDA typically follows the committee’s decision, which would make this the third Covid-19 vaccine available in the U.S. Here’s what you need to know. How Effective Is The Johnson & Johnson Vaccine? Overall, Johnson & Johnson says its vaccine is about 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe cases of Covid-19. But there is some nuance in this number. The vaccine efficacy was slightly lower in some regions, like South Africa, where the 501Y. V2 strain of Covid-19 is dominant. And the vaccine was more effective in clinical trials in the U.S., where the original SARS-CoV-2 variant is still the most common strain. In the U.S., studies found that the vaccine was 72% effective at preventing moderate Covid-19 and 86% effective at preventing severe Covid-19. But this isn’t the most important measure of efficacy, says Jenna Guthmiller, a vaccine researcher at the University of Chicago. “I think the most important thing is that people aren’t getting hospitalized,” she says, “it’s preventing hospitalizations, and ultimately death as well.
