The top advisor of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed predicted on Tuesday that Johnson & Johnson would seek approval for its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine candidate later this month — and that it could get the greenlight in February.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui said that he anticipated that the pharmaceutical giant would have enough data from its late-stage trials to apply for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in late January.
“If [the] submission is happening at the end of January, one could project that approval of the emergency use authorization may happen somewhere in the middle of February,” Slaoui said at a press conference.
Slaoui said if the drug is approved, they could begin to distribute a number of doses that month somewhere in the “single-digit millions.”
“We are trying to make that number as close to a double-digit number [in the millions] as possible and then a larger number in March and much larger number in April,” Slaoui said.
“This is a one-shot vaccine so that is millions of individuals fully immunized,” he added.
Johnson & Johnson has a goal of manufacturing a billion vaccine doses this year. Courtesy Johnson & JohnsonThe Food and Drug Administration has already approved vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, though both involve a two-shot regimen.
