New study suggests Johnson & Johnson is less effective against variants

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A new study has found that the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine may be less effective in combating coronavirus variants than other shots.

The results, published by bioRxiv but not yet peer-reviewed or published, suggest that mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna could better protect against delta and lambda strains than the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The study found that the vaccine’s efficacy in neutralizing the disease was “significantly reduced” with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Overall, the results found the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be 94-95% effective in preventing moderate to severe cases of COVID-19, and Johnson & Johnson to be 66.9% effective.

Nathaniel Landau, a virologist at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine who led the study, told the New York Times that researchers don’t want to scare people from getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but say it can be supplemented with another dose of the vaccine. Johnson & Johnson vaccine or a different vaccine.

“The message we wanted to give was not that people shouldn’t get the J&J vaccine, but hopefully it will be boosted in the future with another dose of J&J or with Pfizer or Moderna,” Landau said.

Another expert said he believed Johnson & Johnson’s efficacy would be increased if it was split into two doses – a theory he says has been proven by various studies.

“I’ve always thought, and often said, that the J&J vaccine is a two-dose vaccine,” John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, told The Times.

The new study comes two weeks after Johnson & Johnson announced that their vaccine was effective against the delta variant.

“We believe that our vaccine provides durable protection against COVID-19 and elicits neutralizing activity against the delta variant. This adds to the strong body of clinical data that supports the ability of the single-shot vaccine to protect against several variants of concern,” Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer of Johnson & Johnson, in a statement.

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