The nearly 17 million Americans who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine are less protected against serious illness and hospitalizations than those who got the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, according to federal data.
An illustrative image of a person holding a medical syringe and a Covid-19 vaccine vial in front of the the Johnson and Johnson logo displayed on a screen. On Wednesday, January 12, 2021, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The nearly 17 million Americans who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine are less protected against serious illness and hospitalizations than those who got the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, according to federal data released Tuesday.
Even combining a Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a booster of either Johnson & Johnson, or one of the two messenger RNA vaccines, wasn't as strong as three shots of the messenger RNA vaccines in preventing emergency room visits or hospitalizations, according to the report.The results confirm what health officials and scientists have known for some time based on earlier research.
The takeaway: "If you can get the messenger RNA vaccine series, and especially get one as a booster, this [study] confirms that is the way to go," said Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Right now, there aren't recommendations for people who got two doses of J & J to get a third messenger RNA shot," said William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "The messenger RNA vaccines seem to be providing more protection . . . What I'd like to see is a very simple recommendation: that everyone get three doses, and they should be messenger RNA vaccines.
A study funded by the division of Johnson & Johnson that developed the vaccine and published in JAMA Network Open found that vaccine effectiveness was stable over six months - 81% effective at preventing hospitalization, though it measured a period before the omicron variant's emergence. It's natural for the levels of virus-fighting antibodies in the blood to wane over time, Moss added. That's part of the design of the body's immune response. "Otherwise our blood would be chock full of antibodies and [blood] wouldn't be able to flow . . . and deliver oxygen to the cells," he said.
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