The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is now one of three covid vaccines that have officially been granted emergency use authorization by the United States' FDA joining the ranks of Moderna and Pfizer.

Results of the phase three clinical trials led by Jansen, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, show the vaccine to be 66% effective overall at preventing moderate and severe disease.

While not as high as Moderna's and fighters 94 95% overall efficacy.

This vaccine was found to be 85% effective against severe disease, regardless of the region or what variant it is exposed to.

What's more, it requires a single dose to work and doesn't have specialized freezers.

Two attributes which could be massive game changers for expanding access across the globe Because, wow has distributing covid vaccines prove tricky.

Mass vaccination is never easy, but this pandemic has presented some unique challenges.

For one, experts have suggested that anywhere between 50 and 85% of the population must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, which is a pretty big range, and it seems to be changing all the time.

Then there's the competing pressure of making enough vaccines to go around.

And that's not even mentioning the amount of sheer effort and energy needed to transport the vaccines from the lab to the public.

The International Air Transport Association figured that with a single dose of vaccine given to eight billion people, they would need 7 8040 sevens to transport it around the world.

But actually all the vaccines, except for Johnson, Johnson or two doses, that means everything from development to distribution to storage can be cut in half.

A logistical God sent not only that, but the change.

A vaccine is more durable than many of its counterparts, particularly those developed by Moderna and Pfizer.

Unlike M RNA based vaccines, which are incredibly fragile and require cold storage to protect from damage the change a vaccine doesn't require the same ultra cold storage to stay intact.

In fact, it can keep in a regular refrigerator for up to three months.

So how exactly did J and J bring this all together?

Well, it all has to do with how it's vaccine is formulated.

Similar to the University of Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and China's Cancino vaccine, it uses a modified adenovirus as its vector specifically, add 26 that adenovirus is going to induce certain kinds of protective responses that will allow this little piece of covid that we stuck into it to have a much greater effect.

Once the little piece of covid is inside the cell's nucleus, it's gene for creating a spike.

Protein is added to the DNA of ad 26 DNA.

Double helix structure is more robust than single stranded RNA.

The cell can then read those instructions to make copies of the virus is spike protein.

These copies trigger the body's immune response, helping it to become familiar with the virus and develop a plan of attack.

Should the to ever meet again.

Adina viruses are usually harmless to healthy people.

Aside from maybe causing a running notes and therefore low risk vectors for delivering DNA into our body's cells, you can grow adenovirus two very, very high levels in manufacturing, and that allows you to make a lot of vaccine very cheaply and at high quality.

It has the advantage of being scalable.

You can very rapidly expand and make hundreds of millions of doses very quickly, but there's a catch or two.

Our bodies can develop immunity to a dino viral vectors, just like they would to most real viral infections.

This means that unlike other vaccines, which rely on additional shots to boost immunity, a second dose of the J and J vaccine could cause the body to start attacking the vaccine itself.

Booster shots can be incredibly useful for providing further protection after initial vaccination, since the body can lose its ability to fight off the disease over time.

They also hold the potential to bring covid mutations under control by priming the body system to look out for new viral variants.

J and J is currently running a trial with 30,000 volunteers to see how the body might react to a second shot and if it works, to raise their immunity, results aren't expected to be released until the year's end.

The body's immunity to Adina viruses may also cause a wrinkle for the vaccine's efficacy.

While most people in the U.

S and Europe haven't been exposed to add 26 therefore don't have neutralizing antibodies, research has found that people living in places like Thailand, Brazil and sub Saharan Africa have higher rates of pre existing immunity Which brings us to the results from J and J's Phase three trial.

Overall, the vaccine is pretty effective at preventing moderate and severe illness about 66% in the U.

S.

It's even higher.

But in Latin America and South Africa, the vaccine didn't perform as well.

Still, the J and J vaccine remains 85% effective at preventing severe disease and 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations and death.

Encouraged by this data, South Africa became the first country to administer the Change A vaccine in February 2021 in late February, the U.

S.

Food and Drug Administration approved it for emergency use.

In light of this decision, Johnson and Johnson has announced plans to deliver 100 million doses to the U.

S.

During the first half of 2021 and up to a billion by the end of the year, which means that we could get a billion people protected.

With this vaccine alone, distribution is expected to start immediately.

Want to learn more about this pandemic and how science is working To tackle it, check out our covid playlist here, make sure to subscribe to secret for all your covid coverage and, as always, thanks so much for watching.

Stay safe.

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