FDA authorizes one-dose COVID-19 vaccine

Summary (IA Generated)

The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which only needs one dose and can be stored in regular refrigerators.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is logistically easier to distribute than the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines, which take two doses and have to be stored in specialized freezers.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was built using a different technology than the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines.

It’s hard to directly compare COVID-19 vaccines because no clinical trials have studied them head-to-head.

The Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines have higher efficacy on paper.

Clinical trials found that they were around 95 percent protective against symptomatic COVID-19.

The Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech trials were tested in the US and other countries before variants appeared.

By one important measure, the vaccines are all pretty comparable: the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was just as good as the other two at protecting people from being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19.

“And Johnson & Johnson appears to be just as good as Moderna and Pfizer at preventing those.

”.

Johnson & Johnson has around 4 million doses, enough for 4 million people, ready to ship in the US.

Over 48 million people in the United States have already received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.