WASHINGTON – Johnson & Johnson announced Thursday that its single-dose coronavirus vaccine is effective against the highly contagious Delta variant with an immune response lasting at least eight months.
Antibodies and immune system cells from eight people inoculated with J & J’s vaccine effectively neutralized the Delta strain, first identified in India, according to the researchers.
A second study of 20 vaccinated patients at Boston’s Beth Israel Medical Center had similar results.
The data was submitted to bioRxiv, a website for unpublished scientific reports where authors “can make their findings available to the scientific community and receive feedback on drafts before submitting them to journals,” according to the portal.
“We believe that our vaccine offers long-lasting protection against COVID-19 and causes neutralizing activity against the Delta variant,” said Paul Stoffels, J&J chief scientific officer, in a company statement.
Mathai Mammen, director of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Research and Development Center, noted that data “from the eight months studied thus far” shows that the J&J vaccine “generates a strong neutralizing antibody response that does not diminish, but instead we observe an improvement over time. “
The Delta variant made its way into India in April and May and has since spread across the world.
A report from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) estimated that this most contagious strain could account for 90% of new cases in the European Union by the end of August.
