Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) has announced that a single shot of its COVID-19 vaccine offers significant protection against the transmissible Delta variant. The vaccine also provides an immune response lasting at least eight months.
The announcement coincides with the company filing two preprint studies to bioRxiv. The first analyzes blood samples from eight patients in the company’s Phase 3 ENSEMBLE study, which it used to win emergency use authorization in the U.S. That study concluded that a single dose of the vaccine led to a higher neutralizing antibody activity against the Delta variant than the Beta variant (B.1.351) that first emerged in South Africa.
Rival Moderna is developing a vaccine known as mRNA-1273.351 based on the Beta variant.
J&J also announced that its vaccine elicited a robust immune response to other common SARS-CoV-2 variants.
The company also said that its vaccine led to a strong neutralizing antibody response that did not wane over eight months. Instead, “we observe an improvement over time. In addition, we observe a persistent and particularly robust, durable cellular immune response,” said Dr. Mathai Mammen, global head, Janssen Research & Development, in a statement. In particular, the recent data indicates that T-cell responses lasted over the eight-month timeframe.
The recent data regarding the durability of the immune response indicates that most people who are fully vaccinated will likely will not require boosters in the short-term.