JOHNSON & JOHNSON HAS announced that global trials found that its single-dose vaccine was 66% effective in preventing Covid-19. 

The results came in a large trial involving 44,000 volunteers that was conducted across three continents and against multiple variants of the virus.

The American company said the jab was 85% effective in preventing severe disease and “demonstrated complete protection against Covid-19 related hospitalisation and death, 28 days post-vaccination”.

The firm added that its jab was found to be 72% effective in preventing Covid-19 in the United States.

The level of protection against moderate and severe Covid-19 was found to be 66% in Latin America. However, it dropped to just 57% in South Africa, where another variant of the coronavirus is circulating.

The vaccine has been developed by the pharmaceutical arm Janssen.

The results indicate that the jab does not provide as much protection as some of its two-shot rivals – notably the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which have more than 90% efficacy in clinical trials.

Speaking about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at an Oireachtas briefing this morning, the chair of Ireland’s High-Level Vaccine Task Force Brian MacCraith said that Ireland could receive 2.2 million doses of the single-dose shot this year. 

“We’d be slightly hopeful that it might happen in April, perhaps late March but again these things are not predictable. The key thing is the early results,” he said.

Ireland through the advanced purchase agreements has signed up to at this stage 2.2 million doses and they’re distributed across quarters 2-4 of this year with the estimated peak in Quarter 3, but you would expect to have many hundreds of thousands in Q2.

“Again this would be good news and these would be single doses and they’d be for single individuals, not having to come back for a second,” he added.

Paul Stoffels, vice chairman of the executive committee and chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, said: “These topline results with a single-shot Covid-19 vaccine candidate represent a promising moment.

“The potential to significantly reduce the burden of severe disease, by providing an effective and well-tolerated vaccine with just one immunisation, is a critical component of the global public health response.”

With reporting by Rónan Duffy and Press Association