Less-effective vaccine still has benefits, Fauci says

WASHINGTON — Johnson & Johnson’s forthcoming single-shot COVID-19 vaccine has more going for it than just a middling ability to prevent infection, the pre-eminent U.S. expert on infectious disease said Monday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, is urging people to look past the shot’s 72% efficacy rate.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, expected to be the next one to receive emergency authorization in the U.S., has proven effective at preventing death and hospitalization.

It’s also relatively cheap to manufacture. And it doesn’t require deep-freeze transportation and storage or double doses like its Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech predecessors, both of which boast 95% efficacy but are in short supply.

“There’s a lot more to protection than just preventing (people) from getting infected,” Fauci said. “We want to keep people out of the hospital, and we don’t want people to die. And in that regard, this will be value-added, not only in the United States, but certainly in the developing world.”

In South Africa, for instance, Fauci said his colleagues are looking forward to getting a vaccine that doesn’t have the logistical challenges of the Pfizer and Moderna offerings.

“You cannot imagine how excited they are,” he said. “The idea of getting a minimal-coldchain-required, cheap, one-shot vaccine means an awful lot.”

Fauci, CDC director Rochelle Walensky and Andy Slavitt, the senior adviser to the White House COVID-19 response team, have been using their thrice-weekly briefings to educate the world about the many virtues of vaccination in a pandemic.

It’s as much about denying the virus a “playing field” — an unvaccinated host, where it can continue to develop dangerous mutations — as it is about protecting individuals, they said. And that requires as many vaccines and vaccinations as possible, as quickly as possible, everywhere around the world, not just in the U.S.