Vaccination plan gets a boost
69,000 new Johnson & Johnson vaccines arrive in the state
With a third coronavirus vaccine on the market, the inoculation process in Virginia should start to move much more quickly, the state’s vaccine coordinator said Wednesday.
“This month of March we’re going to be in a very different place in terms of supply,” Dr. Danny Avula said on a press briefing by phone. “It will feel very different than it has the last few months.”
Virginia is getting an initial 69,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was approved by the FDA over the weekend. Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it requires only one shot and is much easier to store.
The first batch will last through next Friday, at which point the state can order more. Avula said Virginia probably won’t get as large of a batch of the J&J vaccine until the end of March, “but at that point, they should do so in a very significant way,” — about 100,000 a week.
The J&J vaccine will pretty quickly make up about 20-30% of Virginia’s overall supply, Avula said, even as it gets steady increases of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. By April, the state should receive between 500,000 and 650,000 total vaccine doses weekly.
With more doses available, Virginia will start relying not just on local health districts and larger health systems to administer them, but also more private practices and pharmacies, Avula said. Pharmacies in the commonwealth already are doling out doses, but mostly through a federal program. Soon they’ll be able to give out shots on behalf of the state as well.
Everyone who wants a vaccine should be able to get one by the end of May, Avula said — in line with what the Biden administration has posited at the national level. Those eligible under the state’s current 1B phase should get shots by the end of April.
Virginia officials hope to vaccinate about 75% of the state to
achieve some form of herd immunity, Avula said. Mass vaccination events are the first step of the Johnson & Johnson rollout.
Starting Friday, “what you will see are large-scale events — 1,000 people a day, up to 5,000 people in an event,” Avula said. “And you’ll see that happening all over the state. All of our health districts and many of our health systems are receiving Johnson & Johnson and committed to doing some pretty large-scale events.”
These events will not be open for anyone, at least at first. Officials will still draw from the state’s preregistration system to invite those eligible.
“No matter what, the best way to be in line for those opportunities is to be preregistered,” Avula said.
Only about 4,000 doses of the initial 69,000 J&J vaccines will come to the eastern region, mainly to the Eastern Shore and Middlesex County. If doses are left over, they’ll send some to the Norfolk and Virginia Beach health districts. But Avula said those already “have a lot of other events going on” and officials want the doses to be used quickly.
Aside from mass vaccinations, state officials also are thinking about which groups the singleshot Johnson & Johnson vaccine could most benefit. People without homes, who are harder to track down for a second dose; and people who already are hospitalized, and therefore have immediate access to health providers, were two of Avula’s examples.
With the rollout of the J&J vaccine, officials nationwide also are concerned about renewed vaccine hesitancy, or even “brand hesitancy” from people who’d prefer one of the others.
Pfizer and Moderna released initial results from their vaccine trials of around 95% efficacy. By contrast, Johnson & Johnson’s is 72% effective in the U.S., with slightly lower rates in countries where aggressive coronavirus variants have already taken hold.
Avula emphasized that the results are not apples-to-apples comparisons, in part because they were held at very different times, with variants circulating during the latest.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has proven “exceedingly good” at preventing hospitalization and death due to COVID-19, he added.
Based on the significant demand for vaccines, he doesn’t anticipate any problems with getting people to take the J&J version. However, “if at any point we find out that people aren’t jumping at the opportunity to get the vaccine,” the state would keep going down the list to others.
In the coming months as supply drastically expands, people likely can choose which vaccine they want anyway, he said.
You can pre-register for a vaccine and check whether you’re on the list at vaccinate.virginia.gov or by calling 1-877-829-4682 (VAX-IN-VA).