UK regulators, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) will soon be assessing a fifth Covid-19 vaccine — and this time offering protection with only a single dose.
Johnson & Johnson have this week announced that its vaccine was 66% effective overall in protecting against moderate to severe COVID-19, 28 days after a single shot.
An effective single-dose vaccine would be a welcome boost to efforts to quell the pandemic — it would offer faster protection than most of the vaccines approved for use so far, which are administered in two shots given weeks apart.
It is understood the vaccine works in a similar way to the one produced by AstraZeneca — meaning it can be stored in normal refrigerators, making it much easier to work with than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Some 30 million doses of the vaccine have been ordered by the UK with deliveries expected in the second half of this year if the vaccine is approved by regulators.
Professor Kevin Marsh of the University of Oxford said the results were “extremely encouraging”.
He said: “It is possible that some people will look at the overall reported efficacy of 66% in preventing moderate to severe Covid-19 and focus on comparisons with potentially higher ‘top line’ efficacy reported for some other vaccines.
“This would be a mistake. The real headline result is that a single-shot vaccine, capable of easy long-term storage and administration, provided complete protection against hospitalisation and death.”
Once this vaccine receives approval it will add to the vaccines currently authorised for use in the UK from Pfizer, Astrazenece, Moderna and also Novavax which it is hoped will also be authorised in the next few weeks.
