The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine offers protection against the coronavirus for "at least eight months" and is also effective against the Delta variant, the company announced on Thursday.
The data showed that the durability of the immune response lasted through at least eight months, the length of time evaluated to date, the Johnson & Johnson company stated in a press release.
Additionally, data show that the vaccine demonstrated "strong neutralising antibody activity" against the Delta variant, "at an even higher level" than for the Beta variant in South Africa, where high efficacy against severe disease was shown.
“Current data for the eight months studied so far show that the single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine generates a strong neutralising antibody response that does not wane," said Mathai Mammen, Global R&D Head of the company.
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"Rather, we observe an improvement over time," he said, adding that "a persistent and particularly robust, durable cellular immune response" was observed.
The company based this conclusion on the research of the team of Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School.
The data are "promising and reassuring," and showed that T-cell responses – including CD8+ T-cells that seek out and destroy infected cells – persisted over the eight-month timeframe examined.
Barouch emphasised that this is not real-life data on efficacy, but added that antibody and T-cell responses usually indicate protection.
