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| A woman receives an injection during phase 3 testing for the Janssen-Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the US. Photograph: Cheryl Gerber/AP |
A little bit more good news to add to that which I reported earlier - we have yet another vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus!
This is one produced by Johnson & Johnson, using techniques they developed for producing a vaccine against ebola. It differs from the other four so far announced in two ways:
- It is effective with only a single does (the others all require two for maximum immunity).
- It is based on a short double strand of DNA, not the single-stranded mRNA that the others contain.
In trials in the USA, it proved to be 72% effective in preventing mild to moderate cases of Covid-19 but had a lower effectiveness in South Africa which reduced the overall effectiveness globally to 60%. However, it was 85% effective at preventing severe infections and was 100% effective at preventing hospitalisations and deaths.
The vaccine was did not vary significantly in its effectiveness across different age-groups and across different ethnicities.
The DNA is contained in a human adenovirus of the type that causes the common cold, but which has been made harmless and unable to reproduce. The role of the virus is to get the section of the corona virus DNA into the cells where it can begin to churn out the coronavirus 'spike' protein which is harmless in itself but which the body recognises as foreign and so makes antibodies against it and also program the immune system to produce T cells which destroy the virus and any cells which are infected by it.
Further trials are planned to check whether there is a significant increase in effectiveness with a second dose as there is with the other vaccines, but that level of protection from a single dose is thought to be enough to bring the pandemic under control and to prevent the high level of serious illness and deaths currently being experienced.
The remarkable thing is the speed with which science has responded to the pandemic, producing four vaccines, with several more under-going efficacy and safety trials in less than a year. To develop a vaccine would normally take closer to ten years.
And it is scarcely worth mentioning, but, once again, religion played no part in the production of this vaccine.
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