The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Monday that it was evaluating a request from the Johnson & Johnson laboratory to allow the injection of a booster of its Janssen vaccine to people aged at least 18 years in the EU.
If the EMA gives the green light, this vaccine which, at its inception, had the advantage of being administered in a single dose will now be entitled to be recalled like all other serums.
It is important to specify that this decision will not change anything in France since the High Authority of Health (HAS) already recommended in August, the injection of a second dose of the Janssen vaccine, at least four weeks after the first injection, anticipating the opinion of the EMA.
Result "in the coming weeks"
"The EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) will carry out an accelerated assessment of the data submitted by the company that markets the vaccine," said the European regulator, adding that a result was "expected in the next few months. weeks ”.
The data analyzed by the Amsterdam-based EMA will include results for more than 14,000 adults who received a second dose of the Janssen vaccine against Covid-19 or a placebo, the agency said.
The European regulator has approved the use of four vaccines in total: those from Pfizer and Moderna, which are based on messenger RNA technology, and those from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, which are based on viral vector technology. .
For the moment in the EU, only booster shots of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are authorized.
If it was initially thought that a dose of Janssen was equivalent to two doses of its competitors, the French health authorities were quickly faced with a "lack of available data to confirm the long-term effectiveness of the regimen. single-dose vaccination 'of this Delta variant vaccine.
They therefore decided to recommend the administration of a second dose of the serum from the American pharmaceutical company.