Good news:
- Big study with 45,000 participants across multiple countries
-Vaccine was 85% effective in preventing severe disease overall
- all hospitalisations and deaths in placebo group
- efficacy against severe disease increased over time (no cases in vaccinees after day 49)
Most importantly:
This is a single-dose vaccine and only needs standard refrigeration.
That means of vaccines so far it is the easiest to distribute.
And plan is to produce one billion doses this year, so protection for one billion people hopefully.
The bad news:
Again a clear signal that vaccines are less efficacious against variant 501Y.V2
"The level of protection against moderate to severe COVID-19 infection was 72% in the United States, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa, 28 days post-vaccination.”
As Tony Fauci just said at the presser:
“We can see that we are going to be challenged. .... It's really a wake up call for us to be nimble and to be able to adjust as this virus will continue for certain to evolve and to mutate as we get more pressure."
But let me end on a positive here:
Protection against severe disease was the same in South Africa and other regions.
Overall this is great news for now for the world.
We have to vaccinate the world and at the same time prepare vaccine updates.
For those wondering who has bought doses of Johnson&Johnson vaccine so far:
EU was biggest buyer so far.

Here is a graph taken from
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/
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