Five of California’s top doctors in state government have received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, an act taken jointly in front of news cameras as officials seek to promote the most recently approved shot.
Federal and state scientists have been focused recently on touting the benefits of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a single-dose shot that has provided virtually 100% protection against the kind of life-threatening COVID-19 disease that leads to hospitalization and death.
Officials have been trying to boost public confidence in the vaccine because, at the time the clinical trials were conducted, the Johnson & Johnson shot was only 72% effective against moderate to severe infection in the U.S.
That’s an impressive percentage compared with the flu vaccine, but officials are concerned that the public will avoid taking the Johnson & Johnson shot to wait for the vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Those shots, which require two doses, were tested earlier in the pandemic, before the wider distribution of worrisome variants, and were found to be more than 94% effective in preventing people from getting sick at all.
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