NJ Expects Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine Doses By Next Week

NEW JERSEY — New Jersey expects to receive about 70,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine next week if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves an emergency use authorization this weekend, Gov. Phil Murphy said Friday.

The FDA was meeting Friday to consider the request from the New Jersey-based pharmaceutical giant. Johnson & Johnson officials said the company could deliver 20 million doses by the end of March.

"Our plan is to begin shipping immediately upon emergency use authorization, and deliver enough single-doses by the end of March to enable the vaccination of more than 20 million Americans, Dr. Richard Nettles, vice president of U.S. medical affairs at Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies/Johnson & Johnson, told Congress on Tuesday. "We are confident in our plans to deliver 100 million single-dose vaccines to the United States during the first half of 2021."

The FDA was scheduled to vote Friday on the emergency approval request, CNBC reported.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single-shot vaccine to fight COVID-19 and requires regular refrigeration as opposed to the deep cold storage required for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that have been distributed since December.

“This is a game-changer,” Murphy said.

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“The more vaccine we have out there the quicker we will be able to get everyone vaccinated,” said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the White House COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force.

Nettles said Johnson & Johnson's coronavirus vaccine trial results have shown:

• The vaccine provided complete protection against COVID-19-related hospitalization and death, as compared to those study participants who received a placebo.
• The vaccine demonstrated 85 percent effectiveness overall in preventing severe disease, including across countries with newly emerging variants.
• The vaccine demonstrated 72 percent effectiveness in the United States (and 66 percent effectiveness overall) at preventing moderate to severe disease.

Johnson & Johnson started its initial human clinical trials in July in the United States and Belgium, followed by Japan and then the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. The company launched its large-scale clinical trial in September, released their results in January and applied to the FDA for emergency-use authorization on Feb. 4.

Johnson & Johnson's vaccine functions more like a traditional vaccine in that it puts a strain of the adenovirus into the body, according to the CDC. Adenovirus is the virus that causes a common cold.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology to teach cells to make a spike protein and trigger an immune response that creates antibodies. Read the CDC's explanation of how mRNA vaccines work.

With reporting by Carly Baldwin

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