Johnson & Johnson vaccine: What happens next for single-dose Covid-19 vaccine
CNNCNN — If all has gone well with its clinical trial, Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine will likely be the next one available in the United States. “If this vaccine proves to be safe and effective, it could have major implications for the vaccine rollout because J&J has committed to producing and deploying at least a billion doses of vaccine during this calendar year, including at least 100 million doses for the U.S. population,” said Dr. Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School, who helped develop Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate. “If it’s a single-dose vaccine, then a billion vaccine doses would translate into a billion people vaccinated,” Barouch said Monday on CNN’s Coronavirus Fact vs Fiction podcast. The process for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should be the same as it was for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. If the data from the Phase 3 trial shows that J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine works and is safe, the company will then request what’s known as an emergency use authorization, or an EUA, from the FDA.