A US advisory panel voted unanimously Sunday to approve the one-shot, easier-to-use Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine and it reaching the arms of people starting this week.
Meeting in emergency session, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly endorsed the vaccine’s effectiveness in completely protecting against hospitalization and death.
The J & J vaccine is the first one authorized in the United States that doesn’t need to be kept frozen or followed by a second shot.
The clearance of a third vaccine comes at a critical time in the pandemic:
After weeks of steadily declining new cases in the United States, the downward trend has stalled — “a very concerning shift in the trajectory,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday.
Experts worry that state and local officials are relaxing restrictions too quickly, and people are letting down their guard even as more contagious and possibly, deadly virus variants are on the rise.
It was almost one year ago that authorities announced what was believed to be the first coronavirus death in the United States.
Since then, more than 500,000 deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, have occurred in the United States.
“Covid cases and deaths are decreasing,” said Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington who leads the panel’s coronavirus vaccine working group.
“But the pandemic is very far from over and many challenges are before us. The need for more safe and effective vaccines remains urgent and vital to ending the pandemic.”
