J&J Says Vaccine Booster Shot Raises Antibody Levels Dramatically

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has announced that it will submit data to the FDA showing that its booster shot dramatically raises the levels of antibodies against COVID-19 in people vaccinated six months prior.

When trial participants were given a booster shot, antibodies against the virus jumped nine times higher than they did 28 days after the primary single-dose vaccination, the company said.

The FDA is now scrutinizing similar data on boosters from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced that it plans to begin providing booster shots to the general population as early as Sept. 20 (DID, Aug. 20). Only Pfizer/BioNTech’s and Moderna’s shots were mentioned, but the agency said it was awaiting new J&J data, so it could also be part of the first distribution of boosters in the fall.

In a large J&J study released earlier this month, South African researchers found that a single shot of the company’s vaccine was 96 percent effective against death from the Delta variant, and 71 percent effective at keeping people out of the hospital (DID, Aug. 9). The researchers followed 480,000 South African healthcare workers.

In other COVID-19 vaccine news, as the Delta variant proliferated in the U.S., vaccine effectiveness dropped from about 90 percent to 66 percent. That’s according to a study following 4,000 health care workers, first responders, and other essential workers in six states. Each participant was being tested weekly. The results were published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Those results track with other studies that have looked at effectiveness over time from the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

An effectiveness rate of 66 percent is still respectable, said the study’s authors.

“Although these interim findings suggest a moderate reduction in the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines in preventing infection, the sustained two thirds reduction in infection risk underscores the continued importance and benefits of Covid-19 vaccination,” the authors wrote in the study.

A separate study in the UK has shown that AstraZeneca’s two-shot COVID-19 vaccine — not yet approved in the U.S. — provided waning protection against the virus. Protection dropped from 77 percent to 67 percent after four to five months. The UK study was based on self-reported infections.

This compares to Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine’s effectiveness drop off to 74 percent after five to six months.

Pfizer yesterday filed a rolling supplemental BLA seeking approval of a third, booster shot of its vaccine in individuals 16 years and older.

Read the MMWR study here: bit.ly/3jflFnB. — Suz Redfearn