Johnson & Johnson announced Thursday that its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine “generated strong, persistent activity against the rapidly spreading [delta] variant,” of the virus.
This new variant of the novel coronavirus has spread rapidly and has become the dominant variant in the U.K. As of Friday, it made up more than 26 percent of cases in the U.S., according to ABC.
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“Current data for the eight months studied so far show that the single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine generates a strong neutralizing antibody response that does not wane; rather, we observe an improvement over time,” said Mathai Mammen, global head of Janssen Research & Development for Johnson & Johnson, in a press release Thursday.
She said the vaccine is playing a critical role in ending the pandemic, which originated in China and was declared a global pandemic last March.
Johnson & Johnson submitted research Thursday to bioRxiv, a server for biological studies. According to the company press release, the research contains new analysis from blood samples that show that “the Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine elicited neutralizing antibody activity against the Delta variant at an even higher level than what was recently observed,” in the beta variant found in South Africa.
Though the vaccine is only 66.3 percent effective in preventing infection, Johnson & Johnson said it is 85 percent effective at protecting against severe or critical disease that would lead to hospitalization or death.
“The vaccine was consistently effective across all regions studied globally, including in South Africa and Brazil, where there was a high prevalence of rapidly emerging [beta and zeta] variants during the study period,” said the company. It also said the vaccine created neutralizing antibodies against other variants such as the alpha, gamma, epsilon and kappa variants.
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Additionally, the immune response triggered by the single-dose vaccine offered protection for eight months, according to data submitted by researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Moderna and Pfizer BioN-Tech manufacture other commonly administered vaccines in the U.S., but each offers a two-dose option opposed to Johnson & Johnson’s single dose. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Moderna vaccine is 94.1 percent effective in protecting against the dominant variant of COVID-19 in the U.S., the Pfizer option is 95 percent effective and the Johnson & Johnson option is 66.3 percent effective.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are effective against the delta variant, according to reports from The Atlantic and NPR.
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