Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is delivered via a single shot.
Courtesy Johnson & JohnsonIt may be necessary to administer annual Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, at least in the near term, Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.
Annual Covid-19 vaccines would have significant implications for companies like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which have developed useful Covid-19 vaccines. Investors have not uniformly given credit to the companies for the vaccines as long-term revenue drivers.
“I think most people feel that this will be something where likely for, yes, the next several years we’ll be getting a COVID-19 shot just like we would a flu shot,” Gorsky said, speaking at a CNBC-hosted healthcare summit, called CNBC’s Healthy Returns Spotlight. “Exactly what that shot is going to be comprised of, I don’t think we know today. But I think we could all imagine a future where we’re living with this, but where we can keep the science at pace with the virus. So you know, we can keep on living our lives.”
Gorsky acknowledged that the course of the pandemic in the coming months and years remains anything but clear, and depends on whether and how the virus continues to mutate.
The comment came days after Pfizer (PFE) CEO Albert Bourla said on an earnings call that their Covid-19 vaccine could also provide a longer-term revenue stream. “Based on what we have seen so far, we believe it is increasingly likely that a durable COVID-19 vaccine revenue stream, like is happening in flu, is a potential outcome,” Bourla said.
The two companies are among the roughly five Western biopharma companies with Covid-19 vaccines that are currently authorized, or likely to be authorized in the near-term. They could find themselves competing next year, and in the longer term, for Covid-19 vaccine sales.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine can be offered as a single dose, an advantage in the near term over its competitors. In late January, the company reported that its vaccine was 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe Covid-19, and 85% effective at preventing severe disease. Those results fell short of expectations, but the company argued at the time that the data were not comparable to results of studies conducted earlier in the pandemic, when there were fewer variants circulating.
On Feb. 4, Johnson & Johnson said it had submitted an application for emergency authorization of its vaccine with the Food and Drug Administration. The agency has called a meeting of its vaccines advisory committee to consider the vaccine for Feb. 26. Authorization could come shortly after.
“Look, I’m hopeful that, you know, the current vaccines that we’re offering are going to make a big difference, I think especially over the next three, four, five months when we start talking hundreds of millions of doses certainly here in the United States but in other places around the world,” Gorsky told CNBC. “We’re going to have to watch. And as we do more and more PCR testing, as we gather more data, as we get more definitive data sets, I think we’ll have a better understanding of just how effective they are.”
Johnson & Johnson shares were up 0.6% in premarket trading on Wednesday morning. The stock is up 5.6% this year, and 9.4% over the past 12 months.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com
February 10, 2021 at 08:05PM
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Annual Covid-19 Boosters May Be Necessary, J&J CEO Says - Barron's
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