Johnson & Johnson supplying 20M COVID vaccine doses ‘immediately’ in US: Chief scientific officer
J&J expected to produce 1 billion doses worldwide by end of 2021, Dr. Paul Stoffels says
Johnson & Johnson is expected to deliver 20 million doses of its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. by the end of March and 100 million by the end of June, the company’s chief scientific officer told FOX Business.
The company is also on track to produce 1 billion doses for global distribution by the end of 2021.
“We are gearing up production globally to get to one billion for the world by the end of the year,” Dr. Paul Stoffels told “Varney & Co” on Monday.
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“There will be huge numbers of vaccines available in the second half of the year for the U.S. and for the rest of the world,” he added.
Stoffels said the company is working with its network of global partners to meet its manufacturing and delivery goals.
“We have a very extensive global collaboration with partners to make sure that we can deliver that billion,” Stoffels said.
Johnson & Johnson began shipping doses its COVID-19 vaccine Monday morning. The rollout began days after an FDA panel voted to endorse the one-dose jab, which was then granted emergency use authorization (EUA) by the agency’s officials. It marks the third COVID-19 vaccine to receive EUA, following such status granted to Pfizer and BioNTech and then Moderna’s shots.
Stoffels said the vaccine is 100% effective in protecting against death and hospitalization after 28 days.
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“It’s protective against severe disease at 85%, including all the variants, as well as 100% protection for death and hospitalization starting day 28 … The vaccine does what it has to do, preventing against severe disease and hospitalization,” he said.
Stoffels added that the company is still working to determine the vaccine’s effectiveness on variants of the virus.
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“We don’t know that yet,” Stoffels said. “And so, we had some discussions on that on Friday at the advisory panel of the FDA where we showed the initial data, which looked good. But it’s only a small part of the study we have been able to analyze for that yet.”
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“So in the coming weeks, we'll finalize that work and we'll be back on the prevention of transmission,” he added. “But there is good hope that we get to a very good number on that.”
FOX Business’ Alexandria Hein contributed to this report.