Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine
What Is the J&J Vaccine?
Recombinant Vector
The J&J vaccine takes a common cold virus, in this case adenovirus, and modifies it with new genetic code that is similar to the genetic code of COVID19. This new genetic code is specific for the portion of COVID that is involved in making the spike proteins. Now this adenovirus is modified, so it can't actually cause harm once given, but it does allow the body's immune system to create antibodies against the spike proteins. For more information about what the spike protein is and what it does, check out my other post on Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines HERE
Basically, the spike protein is the major protein COVID uses in order to attach to and ultimately infect our cells. It is absolutely essential in the viruses ability to thrive within our bodies.
Summary
A different virus that is modified with its genetic code similar to COVID19 is injected into your body. This virus, again specifically the adenovirus, one injected into the body begins to create spike proteins that are analogous in shape and structure to COVID19’s. Your body then recognizes these spike proteins as foreign and creates antibodies against them. This way, when the real coronavirus enters your body with identical spike proteins, your immune system already knows them to be foreign and wipes out the coronavirus before it can cause significant harm.
Advantages Over Other Vaccines
It can be stored for up to 3 months at regular refrigerator temperatures. This will facilitate a more wide spread distribution and hopefully get the vaccines to more individuals faster - achieve herd immunity more quickly.
Single dose vs all the others are 2 doses. This is actually hugely important because experts have concluded so far that about 1 in 4, or 25%, of all individuals that have gotten the first dose of another vaccine have not received the second (hard to track down), which provides complete immunity.
Effectiveness?
The major J&J clinical trial performed was called the Ensemble trial. This was the large, phase III clinical trial where 1000s of patients were enrolled to assess the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. It was proven to be 66% effective at preventing moderate and severe COVID-19 by day 28 and 85% effective at preventing severe COVID19 after day 49 among all participants. It is important to note that this was not just the USA, but in multiple geographic locations including USA, Latin America, and South Africa. It also took place during the peak wave of COVID - November through January.
Also, not one individual who received the vaccine were hospitalized with COVID19 symptoms.
Compared to Current Vaccines?
The two major difference is the mechanism in which each vaccine provides immunity as well as the number of shots one has to receive.
Unfortunately, we don't have any studies comparing the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines with the newly developed Johnson and Johnson one. From individual trials, it would appear that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are slightly more effective than the Johnson and Johnson vaccines as these two vaccines attained over 95% effectiveness at preventing COVID19, but this is extremely preliminary and the time frames as well as overall patient populations were not equivocal. Hopefully we can get more information in the future.
Which Vaccine Should you Get?
Whichever is available the soonest in order to help achieve heard immunity. This will allow the pandemic to pass faster!
