Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine holds up in US durability study

Findings were unveiled Thursday from the largest US study to date on the durability of COVID-19 vaccines, with Johnson & Johnson's jab producing a robust result in terms of breakthrough infections and hospitalizations, as reported by Interactive Investor.

The non-peer-reviewed study posted on medRxiv assessed durability profiles of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, as well as Johnson & Johnson's single-shot jab, in terms of COVID-19 breakthrough infections, hospitalisations and ICU admissions.

Johnson & Johnson's vaccine appeared to be more durable against breakthrough infections and hospitalisations, whereas the mRNA vaccines showed earlier waning effectiveness for these two measures. All three vaccines showed no signs of waning protection against COVID-19-related ICU admissions at any points.

"While these are rapidly evolving data, we are seeing vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19-related hospitalization of approximately 80% from a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and this level of protection holds steady across the length of time studied thus far – up to six months," said Mathai Mammen, executive vice president for Johnson & Johnson's Janssen unit.

"The robust and sustained durability of our COVID-19 vaccine reflects its unique underlying immunology," he said, noting "we previously reported that our vaccine induces a strong antibody response, as well as an especially strong increase in T-cells that is consistent across variants, including Omicron."