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The advisory committee of the US Federal Drug Agency (FDA, for its acronym in English) has recommended today the approval of the vaccine against Covid-19 manufactured by Janssen, the vaccine division of the multinational Johnson & Johnson (J&J) .
The decision is not binding, but it is assumed that the FDA will approve the vaccine next week.
With this, the
United States will have three approved vaccines.
On Thursday, that country reached the symbolic figure of 50 million doses administered with the vaccines made jointly by Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech and Moderna.
In principle, the J&J vaccine has
two great advantages
over the other two.
The first is that you
only need one dose,
compared to two of those of Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna, which require two, separated by several weeks between one and the other.
The second, that it can be
kept in a refrigerator.
Both characteristics make it faster to immunize the population with it, and that its transport and conservation is much easier.
This can play an important role when it comes to distributing it to rural areas and, above all, to developing countries.
The
efficacy
of the new drug is, however, lower, reaching 72%, compared to more than 90% of its two rivals.
The J&J vaccine is also
less effective against the
recent South African
mutation
of the virus.
Against those of Brazil and Great Britain, however, its effectiveness does not diminish.
The main problem with this pharmaceutical product is going to be
its manufacture.
In the next month there will only be about 20 million doses to be distributed.
This vaccine will not begin to see widespread use until May.
In the next two weeks, the US is expected to approve
two more vaccines.
One is that of
AstraZeneca
, which is already being used in the EU.
The other is from the suburban Washington
drugmaker Novavax
.
The latter could be, according to experts, decisive in the fight against the pandemic, since it could produce a much longer lasting immunization than those of the others.
At the moment, however, it is in the clinical analysis phase.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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