Johnson & Johnson To Start Human Trials On COVID-19 Vaccine In July

Johnson & Johnson announced that the development of an experimental coronavirus vaccine is ahead of schedule. The pharmaceutical company had planned to begin human trials in September, but after promising results in early testing, they decided to move up the human testing to July.

“Based on the strength of the preclinical data we have seen so far and interactions with the regulatory authorities, we have been able to further accelerate the clinical development of our investigational SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Ad26.COV2-S, recombinant,” J&J’s Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels said in a press release.

The experimental vaccine is similar to one the company created for the Ebola virus in 2019. If the vaccine proves effective, they hope to produce between 600 million and 900 million doses by April 2021.

The World Health Organization is tracking the progress of 124 potential vaccines. There are currently ten candidates that are undergoing clinical trials.

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