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Johnson & Johnson new Ebola vaccine targets 50,000 people in 4 months
Approximately 23,000 doses of the Ad26.ZEBOV/MVA-BN-Filo vaccine—manufactured by Johnson & Johnson (J&J)—have arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Trained immunization teams will initially administer the vaccine in two sites, with four more to be set up in the coming weeks. It will be offered to adults and to children aged one and older according to the study protocol, and initially target 50,000 people over a four-month period.
Over the past few weeks, preparations to introduce a new Ebola vaccine have been underway in two health districts in DRC’s capital Goma which is a city of two million people. DRC’s Ministry of Health announced that vaccination began on November 14 as part of a large-scale clinical study in areas of the country affected by the ongoing Ebola epidemic. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is a partner in a consortium of international organizations involved in planning and implementing the study.
The arrival of the new vaccine means that more people who are at risk of contracting Ebola can potentially be protected. Additionally, the study will result in more data on this second Ebola vaccine, which could pave the way for another approved tool to fight future Ebola epidemics. Currently, Merck’s rVSV-ZEBOV, which was recently approved in Europe, is the only approved vaccine against Ebola.
MSF will manage the new vaccine’s implementation in collaboration with DRC’s Ministry of Health and the Institut National de Recherche Biomedicale. Additionally, MSF community engagement teams have been meeting with people in Majengo and Kahembe health districts in Goma to share information about the vaccine and answer their questions. These two districts have been identified in collaboration with health authorities as the first to be offered the vaccine.
Vaccination is one of the key tools to protect people from the Ebola virus. Merck’s rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine—the vaccine currently being used most widely in DRC—has been proven to be effective and has become a valuable resource in the fight against the epidemic. The introduction of a second vaccine is not meant to replace the rVSV vaccine, but to complement it and hopefully provide us with an additional tool in the fight against future Ebola outbreaks. As this is the tenth outbreak of Ebola in DRC, it makes sense to work towards having another vaccine option introduced into the country.
The vaccine was endorsed in the interim recommendations by WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on immunization in May of 2019. It was chosen because it has the most potential among other candidate vaccines. Also because it had already passed phase I and II clinical trials, with over 6,000 human volunteers participating. These studies showed that the vaccine has an excellent safety profile.
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