Coronavirus Vaccine Underway As J&J Begins Single Dose #COVID-19 Trial Testing—-All the time, resources and energy put into researches, study and clinical trial of a vaccine to rid the world of Covid-19 has finally paid off as Johnson & Johnson begins single dosing of up to 60,000 volunteers, Associated Press has reported.
In one of the largest study yet, Johnson & Johnson aims to enroll 60,000 volunteers to test its single-dose approach in the U.S., South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Other candidates in the U.S. require two shots.
The company became the fourth vaccine maker to move its candidate into late-stage human studies in the U.S. The study is nearly two months behind those of Moderna, working with NIAID, and Pfizer, partnered with BioNTech SE, whose final-stage trials started in late July. Pfizer has said it could get efficacy results by the end of October. Those vaccines use two-dose regimens.
“A single dose could be a very efficient tool to combat the pandemic as it is faster acting,” he said Wednesday in an interview. Animal models and early human studies showed that one shot of its vaccine generated a strong immune response in just 15 days, Chief Scientific Officer, Paul Stoffels said.
The final-stage study will pit the vaccine against a placebo injection, with a goal of showing whether it reduces cases of moderate to severe COVID-19, “the most important part of the disease to prevent,” he added.
