Tag Archives: Johnson & Johnson

Business

5 things to know before the stock market opens Feb. 26, 2021

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Here are the most important news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:

1. Stocks try to recover from Thursday’s tech-led rout

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

NYSE

U.S. stock futures were choppy as tech stocks tried to recover from Thursday’s rout that dragged the Nasdaq down 3.5% for its worst single-day performance since October. Tesla fell slightly again in Friday’s premarket, a day after sinking 8% in a brutal week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday sank 559 points, or 1.8%, from a record closing high the previous session. The Dow had its worst day in nearly a month and so did the S&P 500, which lost almost 2.5%. The culprit behind the selloff was the rapid rise in bond yields.

All three stock benchmarks were tracking for weekly losses. Ahead of the final trading day of February, the Nasdaq was clinging to a gain for the month, which started off strong. The Nasdaq was down nearly 7% from its Feb. 12 record closing high. The Dow and S&P 500 both remain solidly in the green for the month. However, the S&P 500 was off almost 2.7% from its last record closing high, also on Feb. 12.

2. 10-year Treasury yield retreats slightly from one-year high

The 10-year Treasury yield retreated Friday morning, but remained above 1.4%, after surging to 1.6% in the previous session to its highest level since February 2020 and more than 0.5% higher since the end of January. The spike in the 10-year yield, which is used as a benchmark for mortgage rates and auto loans, has been driven by expectations of improving economic conditions as coronavirus vaccines are rolled out, as well as fears of higher inflation.

A fresh round of government stimulus checks, approved in December, sent personal income up to its biggest monthly gain since April 2020 though inflation remained tame. The Commerce Department reported Friday morning that personal income rose 10% in January, slightly beating expectations. Personal consumption expenditure inflation matched estimates at 1.5%.

3. House to pass Covid bill; Senate official says no minimum wage

Service industry workers speak in support of the introduction of the Raise the Wage Act, which includes a $15 minimum wage for tipped workers, on Jan. 26, 2021 in Washington.

Jemal Countess | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Inflation worries are being stoked on the thought that the $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus bill — which is seen passing the House on Friday — on top of accelerating growth could overheat the economy. Democrats on Capitol Hill are trying to push their relief measure, including a federal minimum wage boost to $15 per hour, through without GOP support. However, a key nonpartisan official, the Senate parliamentarian, ruled Democrats cannot include the minimum wage increase in the bill. The decision means the Senate will likely pass a different version of the bill than the House, and representatives will have to approve the plan a second time.

4. FDA panel to vote on J&J’s single-shot Covid vaccine

A healthcare worker fills a syringe from a vial with a dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against the COVID-19 coronavirus as South Africa proceeds with its inoculation campaign at the Klerksdorp Hospital on February 18, 2021.

Phill Magakoe | AFP | Getty Images

A key FDA advisory panel is set to vote Friday on whether to recommend approval of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid vaccine for emergency use, which would help pave the way for a third preventive treatment in the U.S. While the full FDA doesn’t have to follow the vaccine committee’s recommendation, it often does. During similar requests by Pfizer and Moderna for vaccines, the FDA authorized those companies’ two-shot regimes a day after the panel of outside medical advisors backed emergency use authorization.

5. DoorDash stock falls after company drops first results since IPO

A DoorDash Inc. delivery bag sits on the floor at Chef Geoff’s restaurant in Washington, D.C.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

As more and more Americans are vaccinated and the economy continues to open up more fully, companies like DoorDash, which has benefited from the stay-at-home trade, could get hurt. In its first report as a public company, the food delivery service told shareholders it expects some of the tailwinds it experienced from stay-at-home orders across the U.S. will turn around once the country gets the virus under control. Shares sank 10% in Friday premarket. Even with that drop, DoorDash would still be up nearly 50% from its $102 per share offer price back in December. While DoorDash late Thursday reported $970 million in revenue in the fourth quarter, which beat estimates, it also reported an adjusted per-share loss of $2.67.

— Follow all the developments on Wall Street in real time with CNBC Pro’s live markets blog. Get the latest on the pandemic with our coronavirus blog.

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Health

Latest news on coronavirus cases and vaccines

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The United States is set to see a substantial boost in Covid-19 vaccines shipped out and ready to administer in the coming weeks. Executives from Pfizer and Moderna told Congress on Tuesday the drugmakers are preparing to nearly double their current output. And on Wednesday, Food and Drug Administration staff endorsed Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine, clearing the path for an emergency use authorization as soon as this week. A J&J executive said once the drug is authorized, the company would be ready to ship more than 20 million doses by the end of March.

The U.S. is recording at least 71,500 new Covid-19 cases and at least 2,030 virus-related deaths each day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using Johns Hopkins University data.

The following data was compiled by Johns Hopkins University:

  • Global cases: More than 112.2 million
  • Global deaths: At least 2.48 million
  • U.S. cases: More than 28.26 million
  • U.S. deaths: At least 502,856

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World

India could play an important role in producing vaccines

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A medic holds Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin vials during the countrywide inoculation drive, in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021.

Vishal Bhatnagar | NurPhoto | Getty Images

India could become the world’s second largest Covid vaccine maker, and analysts say the country has the capacity to produce for both its own population and other developing countries.

Most of the world’s vaccines have historically come from India. Even before Covid-19, the South Asian country produced up to about 60% of the world’s vaccines — and can do so at a relatively low cost.

“India has been a manufacturing hub for vaccines … even before the pandemic, and should therefore be a strategic partner in the global inoculation against COVID-19,” JPMorgan analysts wrote in a report last month.

Consulting firm Deloitte predicts that India will be second only to the U.S. in terms of coronavirus vaccine production this year. PS Easwaran, a partner at Deloitte India, said more than 3.5 billion Covid vaccines could be made in the country in 2021, compared to around 4 billion in the U.S.

Furthermore, companies in India are currently scaling up production to meet demand.

“We are expanding our annualized capacities to deliver 700 million doses of our intramuscular COVAXIN,” said Indian firm Bharat Biotech, which developed a Covid vaccine together with the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research.

Covaxin has been approved for emergency use in India, but has been mired in controversy due to criticism that there was a lack of transparency in its approval, and also because it hasn’t published enough efficacy data.

India vaccines suitable for developing world

Another vaccine — known as Covishield in India and co-developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford — has also been granted emergency approval in India. It is being produced locally by the Serum Institute of India (SII).

According to Reuters, SII makes around 50 million doses of Covishield every month, and plans to increase production to 100 million doses a month by March.

Other Indian companies have agreed to produce vaccines for developers such as the Russian Direct Investment Fund and U.S. firm Johnson & Johnson. To be clear, these vaccine candidates have not been approved for use yet.

“Even without successful vaccine development from their own pipelines, available capacity provides opportunity to partner as contract manufacturers with approved vaccine developers to meet supply needs particularly for India and other [emerging markets],” the JPMorgan report said.

With a proven track record on the scale at which vaccines are produced, India should be able ramp up production to meet international demand as well.

Nissy Solomon

Centre for Public Policy Research

India’s vaccines will likely be more suitable for developing countries, said K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India.

Some of the leading vaccines right now, such as the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, make use of messenger RNA technology (mRNA) which uses genetic material to trigger the body’s own infection-fighting process.

Those vaccines require “stringent cold chain requirements” that will be difficult, or even “out of the realm of possibility,” for most health systems, Reddy said.

Vaccines made in India are easier to transport and cheaper, putting the country in a better position than the U.S. and Europe when it comes to meeting demand in the developing world, he added.

India’s ‘proven record’

India’s huge production capacity also gives analysts confidence that the country can provide vaccines to other nations.

New Delhi has pledged to send vaccines to its neighboring countries, and has already supplied 15.6 million doses to 17 countries, according to Reuters.

“India’s manufacturing capabilities are sufficient to meet domestic demand,” said Nissy Solomon, a senior research associate at Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR).

“With a proven track record on the scale at which vaccines are produced, India should be able ramp up production to meet international demand as well,” she told CNBC.

Solomon added that the country monitors domestic needs before making decisions on exports.

Bharat Biotech, for its part, said it is “fully prepared to meet the needs of India and global public health.”

Challenge of storing, distributing vaccines

However, there will be challenges as the country seeks to meet the vaccine demand in India and beyond.

Jefferies equity analyst, Abhishek Sharma, wrote in a note that the rollout of vaccines in India has been slow. Even under the assumption that the speed of vaccinations will increase, Sharma estimates that only 22% of India’s 1.38 billion population can be vaccinated in a year.

That’s roughly the number of people India wants to inoculate by July or August.

“The supply of vaccines is not as much a problem as that of storage, distribution and vaccine uptake,” said CPPR’s Solomon.

“India lacks the capacity to store and distribute to the masses at a scale as big as this,” she said, adding that the country should “strategically” choose vaccines that do not have to be stored at extreme temperatures.

I would say that [these challenges are] more like speed breakers which will slow down the … program, rather than actual roadblocks which require the program to stop.

K Srinath Reddy

Public Health Foundation of India

The vaccines that India currently manufactures require normal refrigeration, but those produced by Pfizer-BioNTech need to be kept in extremely cold temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit), while those by Moderna have to be stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit).

The “real challenge” is in the sheer number of people who need to be vaccinated, said Reddy from the Public Health Foundation of India.

“This is the first time that an adult immunization program is being undertaken at such an unprecedented scale,” he told CNBC.

He said immunization programs typically focus on vaccinating children and mothers, and logistics network may not be prepared to handle vaccines for entire populations.

Reddy suggested that existing cold chain for food products could be used for vaccines, and was hopeful that this problem could be resolved.

“I would say that [these challenges are] more like speed breakers which will slow down the … program, rather than actual roadblocks which require the program to stop,” he said.

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Business

AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Effective Against U.K. Variant in Trial

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LONDON—A Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and

AstraZeneca

PLC is effective against a variant of coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the U.S. and around the world, according to a new study, a reassuring sign for governments banking on mass vaccination to bring the pandemic to an end.

The preliminary findings, published in a study online Friday that hasn’t yet been formally reviewed by other scientists, follow similarly positive results from other manufacturers.

Preliminary studies from

Pfizer Inc.

and

Moderna Inc.

found their Covid-19 shots continued to offer protection against new virus variants that have contributed to a fresh surge in cases in the U.K., Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.

Vaccine makers are nevertheless readying new shots that zero in on the new variants more precisely, underlining how mutations in the virus risk morphing the year-old pandemic into a long-running cat-and-mouse game between scientists and a shifting enemy. The virus behind Covid-19 has so far been linked to almost 2.3 million deaths worldwide and more than 100 million cases.

The study published Friday looked at the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness against a new variant of coronavirus first identified in the U.K. last year.

As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ

The variant has now displaced older strains to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in Britain and is spreading in many other countries, including the U.S., where public-health officials have said it could become the dominant version of the virus.

Preliminary estimates suggest the variant from the U.K. is 50%–70% more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus. U.K. scientists said recently that early data suggested it could also be deadlier.

Researchers examined blood samples from around 256 participants in an ongoing clinical trial of the vaccine in the U.K. who tested positive for Covid-19.

Genetic sequencing allowed them to identify which participants were infected with the new variant and which had an older version. A little under a third had the new variant.

By testing antibody levels and other markers of immune system activity against the virus, the researchers found the vaccine triggered an effective immune response against the new variant in 75% of cases that showed symptoms of infection, and in around two-thirds of cases if those that didn’t show symptoms were also included.

The U.K. Coronavirus Variant

The small-scale study showed the vaccine works slightly better against older, more established versions of the virus. For those with the older strain, the vaccine was effective in 84% of symptomatic cases and 81% of all cases.

The researchers reported sharply differing antibody responses among the two groups, saying certain types of antibodies induced by the vaccine were up to nine times less effective at neutralizing the new variant than the old. Overall protection was similar, however, suggesting other parts of the immune system are playing a key role.

Andrew Pollard,

director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said it isn’t entirely clear which biological mechanisms are most important. It might be infection-fighting T-cells or other types of antibodies, he said.

“We don’t know the answer,” he said.

Almost 120 million doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, according to figures compiled by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project. Roll-outs have been patchy, with some countries such as Israel and the U.K. moving rapidly to inoculate their most at-risk citizens and others, including in Europe, lagging behind due to supply and other issues. The U.S. has so far given at least one dose of vaccine to 35 million people, around 10% of its population.

Vaccine makers say the technology behind Covid-19 vaccines should allow them to swiftly retool their production lines to produce shots targeted more precisely at new and emerging variants.

Some studies have suggested a variant first identified in South Africa might be less susceptible to existing vaccines than the U.K. variant. Companies including Moderna, Pfizer and its partner

BioNTech

SE,

Johnson & Johnson

and

Novavax Inc.

are designing new vaccines to specifically target the South African variant.

Babak Javid,

associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said small differences in how vaccines perform against new variants compared with established versions isn’t a major concern provided those vaccinated are protected against severe illness and hospitalization. That will be critical to determining when countries relax lockdowns and other public health restrictions, he said.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

McKinsey Agrees to $573 Million Settlement Over Opioid Advice

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Consulting giant McKinsey & Co. has reached a $573 million settlement with states over its work advising OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and other drug manufacturers to aggressively market opioid painkillers, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal, reached with 47 states and the District of Columbia and expected to be publicly announced Thursday, would avert civil lawsuits that attorneys general could bring against McKinsey, the people said. The majority of the money will be paid upfront, with the rest dispensed in four yearly payments starting in 2022.

McKinsey said last week it is cooperating with government agencies on matters related to its past work with opioid manufacturers, as state and local governments sue companies up and down the opioid supply chain. At least 400,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses of legal and illegal opioids since 1999, according to federal data.

The consulting firm stopped doing opioid-related work in 2019 and said in December its work for Purdue was intended to support the legal use of opioids and help patients with legitimate medical needs.

While some companies have reached deals with individual states to avoid trials, the McKinsey settlement marks the first nationwide opioid pact to come from the flood of litigation that began in 2017. A much larger, $26 billion deal with three drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson has been in the works for more than a year but is still being negotiated.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that McKinsey was close to a settlement with states and that a deal could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The negotiations occurred as hundreds of exhibits describing McKinsey’s work to boost OxyContin sales were made public in recent months during Purdue’s chapter 11 bankruptcy case in White Plains, N.Y.

Memos McKinsey sent Purdue executives in 2013 that have been made public in bankruptcy court filings included recommendations that the company’s sales team target health care providers it knew wrote the highest volumes of OxyContin prescriptions and shift away from lower-volume prescribers. McKinsey’s work became a Purdue initiative called “Evolve to Excellence,” which the U.S. Justice Department described in papers released last year in connection with a plea agreement with Purdue as an aggressive OxyContin marketing and sales campaign.

According to bankruptcy court records, McKinsey sent recommendations to Purdue in 2013 that consultants said would boost its annual sales by more than $100 million. McKinsey recommended ways Purdue could better target what it described as “higher value” prescribers and take other steps to “Turbocharge Purdue’s Sales Engine.”

Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue pleaded guilty in November to three felonies, including paying illegal kickbacks and deceiving drug-enforcement officials. The drugmaker filed for chapter 11 protection in 2019 to address thousands of opioid-related lawsuits brought against it. Purdue said in a lawsuit filed last week against its insurers that creditors have asserted hundreds of thousands of claims in the bankruptcy case and collectively seek trillions of dollars in damages.

McKinsey also advised other opioid makers on sales initiatives. The firm’s work for

Johnson & Johnson

came up in a 2019 trial in a case brought by Oklahoma against the drug company for contributing to the opioid crisis in the state through aggressive marketing of prescription painkillers. The trial ended with a $572 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson, which was later reduced to $465 million and is still on appeal.

The vast majority of the money McKinsey will pay in the settlement will be divided among the participating states, with $15 million going to the National Association of Attorneys General to reimburse it for costs incurred in the investigation, one of the people familiar with the deal said.

The settlement also includes some nonmonetary provisions, like requiring McKinsey to create a repository of documents related to its work for opioid makers, the person said.

The holdout states include Nevada, which said Wednesday night that its investigation into the consulting giant continues “and we are conversing with McKinsey about our concerns.”

Purdue has been negotiating with creditors, which include states, since filing for bankruptcy, but finalizing a deal has been slowed by demands from some states that the company’s owners, members of the Sackler family, contribute more than the $3 billion they have agreed to.

States have been keenly focused on ensuring any settlement money from the opioid litigation goes toward helping alleviate the impact of the crisis, including through beefing up treatment programs and helping overstretched law enforcement. The states are looking to avoid the outcome of the 1990s tobacco litigation, when a $206 billion settlement was often spent to fill state budget holes. The McKinsey settlement documents say the money is intended for abatement, the person familiar with the deal said, though state laws differ widely on how settlement funds can be earmarked.

Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com and Jonathan Randles at Jonathan.Randles@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Which Is the Best Covid Vaccine? Rivals Are Pfizer, Astra, Modern and Sputnik

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Sign up here for our daily coronavirus newsletter on what you need to know, and subscribe to our Covid-19 podcast for the latest news and analysis.

Few people care who made their flu shot or their childhood immunizations against a range of deadly diseases. Covid changed that, turning vaccine makers into household names and prompting calls for choice.

Doses remain scarce for now, amid a global scramble inflamed by a dispute between the European Union and British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc. Most of the more than 90 million people who’ve gotten a shot consider themselves lucky for any protection against the pandemic. But vaccines are proliferating, with positive trial data from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax Inc. placing their candidates next in line for approval.

Health officials will have to figure out how to allocate all these different vaccines. The European Medicines Agency approved the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday for all adults, but limited trial data on its effectiveness in the elderly has led some countries to impose restrictions. Germany said it should be used only for those under 65, while Italy cautioned against administering it to those over 55.

Many people who’ve been boning up on efficacy rates, dosing schedules or side effects want to decide for themselves. If the options are a shot from a Western drugmaker that’s been vetted by an independent regulator or one from a Russian or Chinese lab with lesser transparency, that desire is even greater.

“We demand the government to provide people the freedom of choice,” said Gergely Arato, a member of the opposition Democratic Coalition party in Hungary.

Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccines.

Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

Hungary broke ranks with other EU members to approve Russia’s Sputnik V and a vaccine from China’s Sinopharm Group Ltd. alongside the three shots cleared by Europe’s drug regulator — from Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca. While Prime Minister Viktor Orban is technically offering choice, his promotion of the Chinese and Russian shots is endangering people’s “willingness to get vaccinated,” Arato said at a press conference this month.

In the U.S., where the only two shots authorized so far — from Pfizer and Moderna — use similar technology and demonstrated virtually identical test results, choice may matter less for now. Elsewhere, however, some health authorities have begun catering to people’s concerns about vaccine differences.

Dubai, Hong Kong

In Dubai, residents older than 60 or with pre-existing conditions can access the shot Pfizer developed with BioNTech SE, or the one from Sinopharm.

In Hong Kong, officials ordered enough doses of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and AstraZeneca — along with plans to secure a fourth option — to cover the 7.5 million residents.

The Pfizer shot will be available at community vaccination centers, with the Sinovac and Astra options offered at private hospitals and clinics, and people will be given the choice of which they want to receive. That’s important in Hong Kong, where some people are wary of taking a Chinese-made vaccine.

“If residents don’t want to take a certain vaccine, they can choose to get the shots at another time and another location,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in December.

Supplies are so tight in most of the world that choice remains impossible. Those getting shots often have no idea which one they’ll receive until they walk through the door of a vaccination center or doctor’s office. But that could change if vaccines from the likes of J&J, Novavax and CureVac NV come on stream in the coming weeks, and as pharma giants like Sanofi and Novartis AG lend their heft to the production effort.

EU Approval

Even if they don’t offer choice, health officials have to decide who gets what. At the Cleveland Clinic, Cassandra Calabrese has been telling patients to take whatever vaccine they get offered, even though some have been asking her which one she’d recommend. “Things may be different as more are approved,” she said in an email.

Vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.

Photographer: Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg

The European Union, criticized for its slow rollout of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, expanded its offerings Friday by approving AstraZeneca’s shot. In a sign of the growing tide of people wanting to choose, the approval came after days of pitched debate about the shot’s efficacy, with Germany’s immunization commission recommending against its use in seniors.

In the U.K., where infections and fatalities are much higher than in Hong Kong, health authorities are prioritizing the quick inoculation of as many people as possible. The second dose of two-shot vaccines is being delayed in an effort to get first injections into as many arms as possible. Other countries are considering similar steps.

Distribution is based on “supply and logistics, such as availability of very cold freezers,” a U.K. Department of Health spokesman said by email. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots must be kept frozen for long-term storage, while refrigeration suffices for the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Efficacy Rates

Although the U.K. has set a priority list for vaccine recipients — starting with the oldest, most vulnerable people — it doesn’t allocate the different shots based on a person’s profile, the agency added. So one 80-year-old patient might receive the AstraZeneca shot while someone else with the same age and health conditions might get the Pfizer one.

Some Britons are expressing a preference on the grounds of patriotism rather than what they might have read about different efficacy rates or side effects. Never mind that the U.S. company’s vaccine was 95% effective in large trials, compared with an average of 70% for AstraZeneca’s shot.

“They’re saying they want to wait for the British one,” Jimmy Whitworth, a professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said in a phone interview. “I think that it’s purely a nationalistic viewpoint.”

— With assistance by Veronika Gulyas, Jinshan Hong, and Adveith Nair

(Updates with German, Italian guidelines in third paragraph)

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Business

There will be enough Covid vaccines for the ‘entire U.S. adult population by June,’ doctor says

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Johnson & Johnson board member Dr. Mark McClellan told CNBC Friday that there could be enough vaccinations for the entire U.S. adult population by the summer. 

“Assuming all of the close review of the J&J data all pans out, we’re going to have the capacity between Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, to have enough vaccines available by June for the entire U.S. adult population,” McClellan, a former FDA commissioner, said on “The News with Shepard Smith.” 

The U.S. plans to buy 200 million Covid vaccine doses from Moderna and Pfizer. The Department of Health and Human Services will boost its vaccine supply to states from 8.6 million to a minimum of 10 million doses per week. So far, states have received more than 49 million doses, but only about half of those have actually ended up in people’s arms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency reports that the U.S. is administering a little more than a million shots every day.

McClellan that the U.S. should significantly increase the amount of shots administered per day and “get our capacity for doing vaccinations up closer to 3 million doses per day.”

The United States has ordered 100 million doses of the J&J vaccine, which the company plans to deliver by June. J&J plans to file for emergency use authorization next week. If J&J’s vaccine is authorized by the FDA, it would be the third vaccine approved for emergency use in the U.S. Pfizer’s vaccine was authorized by the FDA on Dec. 11, and Moderna’s was authorized a week later.

The J&J vaccine efficacy numbers were lower than those for Pfizer and Moderna. Pfizer’s vaccine was found to be 95% effective against preventing Covid-19, while Moderna’s was found to be about 94% effective. J&J’s vaccine was found to be 66% effective overall in preventing moderate to severe Covid.

Host Shepard Smith asked McClellan about the lower efficacy numbers compared to Pfizer and Moderna, and he explained to Smith that “we’re fighting a different virus today than we were three months ago when previous trials were done.”

Additionally, J&J ran its trial across three continents and the level of protection varied by region. Its vaccine demonstrated overall, 72% effectiveness in the United States and 66% in Latin America. In South Africa, where the dangerous B.1.351 strain of Covid caused a surge in cases, the J&J  vaccine demonstrated 57% effectiveness.

“Unfortunately, we’re probably going to be fighting a different virus three months from now, so most important in winning this battle, is getting as many people vaccinated as possible,” said McClellan. “The faster we get shots in arms, the more people we get vaccinated here in this country and around the world, the better we’re going to do in containing that further spread and the further damage from Covid.”

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