J&J scraps Covid-19 vaccine trials in India as it focuses to speed up delivery

JOHNSON & JOHNSON will not be undertaking local trials for its single-shot Covid-19 vaccine in India and is looking at ways to accelerate its availability in the country, the Economic Times reported on Tuesday (29), citing a company spokesperson.

J&J said in April it was in talks with India's government to begin a bridging clinical study of its Janssen Covid-19 vaccine candidate in the country.

In late May, India said it would scrap local trials altogether for "well-established" vaccines manufactured in other countries.

The US-based drugmaker is exploring how to accelerate the availability of its vaccine in India, the report said.

Over 41 million Covid-19 vaccine doses were administered across India last week, with pandemic-induced restrictions being eased further.

Experts have said widespread vaccination remains one of the best tools to avoid the kind of devastation India saw during its second wave of the pandemic.

J&J did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Infectious disease experts are weighing the need for booster shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna mRNA-based vaccines for Americans who received Johnson & Johnson's one-dose vaccine due to the increasing prevalence of the more contagious Delta coronavirus variant.

Canada and some European countries are already allowing people to get two different Covid-19 shots.

There is no substantial data showing how protective the J&J vaccine is against the Delta variant first detected in India. However, UK studies show that two doses of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccines are significantly more protective against the variant than one.