After AstraZeneca, will the Janssen vaccine in turn be abandoned?
In a report published on Monday, the ANSM (National Medicines Safety Agency) expresses serious doubts about its effectiveness against Covid-19, in particular against the Delta variant.
"A potential signal has been highlighted in front of a large number of cases of vaccine failure with the Janssen vaccine, with patients in intensive care or who have died from Covid-19, most of whom have serious risk comorbidities", perhaps. we read in the survey conducted from July 9 to August 26, 2021.
Responsible for monitoring adverse effects with the Janssen vaccine, the regional pharmacovigilance centers (CRPV) of Grenoble and Lyon detail the role that the vaccine may have played (or not) in the appearance of various side effects, more or less serious (thrombosis, facial paralysis, stroke, convulsions etc.).
On this point, the results are rather reassuring: “These cases are isolated and not suggestive of the role of the vaccine (identified risk factors, incomplete etiological assessments).
(…) To date, there is no particular signal concerning the deaths reported in France with the Covid-19 Janssen vaccine.
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Overrepresentation of patients vaccinated by Janssen in intensive care
The report highlights above all a lack of efficacy of the Janssen vaccine against Covid-19, and delivers a stinging conclusion: “Given the number of deaths and patients in intensive care, vaccinated with a single dose of Janssen vaccine within a more than 21 days, and the alert from 2 CRPVs (Marseille and Tours) concerning the overrepresentation of patients vaccinated by Janssen in intensive care for Covid-19, this potential signal relating to vaccine failures of the Covid-19 Janssen vaccine was relayed for further investigations (in progress). "
As of August 26, just over a million doses have been administered in France with this viral vector vaccine, which offered the advantage of requiring only one dose.
At least until the end of August: three weeks ago, the French National Authority for Health recommended that people vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine receive a second injection of a messenger RNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna), due to the "lack of data available to confirm the long-term efficacy" of the single-dose regimen.
In the process, the Ministry of Health announced that it would follow this recommendation.
Read also "It's a shame": why the Janssen vaccine against Covid-19 "did not find its audience"
As of May 28, the orientation council of the vaccine strategy recommended "to people having received an injection of Janssen vaccine to receive a second dose of mRNA vaccine within 4 weeks after the first injection", in the event of " localized cluster detection due to variant B.1.617 (Delta variant) ”.
According to the Grenoble and Lyon CRPVs, the data “indeed show insufficient protection conferred by a single dose of vaccine (Comirnaty, Spikevax or Vaxzevria) against symptomatic forms linked to the Delta variant”.
And the available data “do not confirm the long-term efficacy of the one-dose vaccination schedule of Janssen vaccine against the Delta variant.
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