New data from a South African study finds Johnson & Johnson's one-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is highly effective in preventing severe disease and death from the Delta viral variant, the Wall Street Journal reports.
It notes that the Sisonke trial, the results of which were announced Friday, included about 480,000 healthcare workers, and found the J&J vaccine was 71 percent effective in preventing hospitalization and 96 percent effective in preventing death from the Delta variant. The vaccine was also 67 percent effective in preventing hospitalization from the Beta variant, the Journal reports, noting that the findings have yet to be published or undergo peer review.
Previous lab-based analyses had suggested the vaccine might be less effective against the Delta variant, but Linda-Gail Bekker, co-lead investigator of the study and director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town, tells the New York Times that these new findings suggest otherwise. "We believe this vaccine is doing what it was designed to do, which was to stop people going to hospital and stop them ending in ICUs and dying," she adds at the Times.