Johnson & Johnson announced new results from the largest study to date on the durability of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States (U.S.), showing that a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine resulted in long-lasting protection for up to six months against COVID-19 breakthrough infections, hospitalizations, and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions. The study was sponsored by the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and conducted in partnership with the Department of Science-Aetion, Inc, and the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
“We continue to undertake extensive efforts to study the durability of protection offered by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine amidst the ever-changing COVID-19 pandemic,” said Mathai Mammen, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Research & Development LLC, Johnson & Johnson. “While these are rapidly evolving data, we are seeing vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19-related hospitalization of approximately 80 percent from a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and this level of protection holds steady across the length of time studied thus far – up to six months. The robust and sustained durability of our COVID-19 vaccine reflects its unique underlying immunology. We previously reported that our vaccine induces a strong antibody response as well as an especially strong increase in T-cells that is consistent across variants, including Omicron.”
The new study posted on medRxiv comprehensively looked at the durability profiles for all three vaccines authorized or approved in the U.S. using the same methodology across three outcomes of interest: COVID-19 breakthrough infections, hospitalizations, and ICU admissions.
The study showed that the effectiveness of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine against breakthrough infections and hospitalizations remained durable. The mRNA vaccines (two-doses) showed waning effectiveness for hospitalizations and breakthrough infections. All three vaccines showed no evidence of waning protection against COVID-19-related ICU admissions at any point, showing strong sustained protection against critically severe disease. The study was not designed to compare the durability of vaccines.