The Ministry of Health today provides details regarding the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that has been approved in Europe for use in order to immunize against infection with the new Coronavirus, which can be used throughout the European Union from April.
The Ministry of Health expects in April the first delivery of several tens of thousands of doses of the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, which will be administered in a single dose, and is easier to keep in the long term, so it would be allocated in mainly for mobile vaccination teams.
"How does the Johnson & Johnson vaccine work?
The vaccine developed by Janssen, the pharmaceutical division of Johnson & Johnson uses a harmless adenovirus that cannot multiply (replicate) in the human body.
This technology, based on adenoviruses engineered to stop replicating, has been researched for a long time, and a similar Ebola vaccine, also produced by Janssen, has been approved for use since 2019.
Janssen uses an adenovirus called Adenovirus 26, which has been modified to contain the information needed to produce the spike protein (the one found on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus). Once the vaccine is administered, the adenovirus delivers this information to human cells, which begin producing the spike protein.
The person's immune system will treat this spike protein as foreign and produce an immune response – antibodies and T cells – against it.
If the vaccinated person comes into contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the immune system will recognize it and be ready to attack it: antibodies and T cells will work together to eliminate the virus, thus protecting the body against COVID-19.
This vaccine is given as a single dose. According to the clinical trial that was the basis for its approval, a single dose is sufficient to significantly reduce the number of symptomatic cases of COVID-19."
