The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the third COVID-19 vaccine to be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. Here, we give a rundown of basic facts about the vaccine and an overview of how it works.
Q: Do the COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility?
A: There’s no evidence that approved vaccines cause fertility loss. Although clinical trials did not study the issue, loss of fertility has not been reported among thousands of trial participants nor confirmed as an adverse event among millions who have been vaccinated.
The Biden administration has made no changes to COVID-19 testing policies for either U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Patrol. But a claim circulating online falsely suggests that the administration has stopped testing detained immigrants before they are released.
It’s difficult to know exactly how deadly COVID-19 is, but as the World Health Organization has written, studies estimate that the infection fatality ratio, or percentage of deaths out of all infections, is between 0.5% and 1%. The true rate isn’t clear, since the pandemic is ongoing and not all infections have been diagnosed.
The observed case fatality rate, or percentage of deaths out of confirmed cases, was 1.2% in the United States as of April 6,
It’s not known exactly how long vaccination lasts, particularly against the omicron variant. But studies of previous variants have suggested that COVID-19 vaccination protects against infection or mild disease for several months, while protection against more serious illness is longer-lasting, on the order of six months or more.
A systematic review of studies conducted prior to omicron, for example, found that for the four main COVID-19 vaccines used worldwide,
Community immunity, often referred to as herd immunity, refers to a situation in which enough of a population is immune to an infectious disease, either through vaccination or prior infection, to largely stop transmission of the disease and indirectly protect those who aren’t immune. The more contagious the disease, the higher proportion of people need to have immunity to get community immunity.
This classical definition applies to diseases such as measles,
Some employers have required their employees to be vaccinated, or undergo regular testing, for COVID-19. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said that employers aren’t prevented from having a mandatory vaccination policy for COVID-19 for employees who are physically in the workplace, as long as employers comply with federal laws stipulating that reasonable accommodations should be made for workers who cannot be immunized because of a disability or religious reason.
President Joe Biden also signed executive orders in September 2021 to require all federal workers and contractors who do business with the federal government to be vaccinated.
The COVID-19 vaccines are no longer provided by the federal government for free, but private insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid, and some Centers for Disease Control and Prevention programs will cover them.
The CDC’s Bridge Access Program provides free vaccines to adults without health insurance and those whose insurance doesn’t pick up all of the cost, through local health centers, health care providers and certain retail pharmacies. The Vaccines for Children Program provides free vaccines for kids who are either Medicaid-eligible,
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have multiple surveillance systems for ensuring vaccine safety. If a health issue occurs after vaccination, people are encouraged to submit information to one of these systems, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Experts do analysis and comb through the submissions to identify and follow-up on adverse reactions that might be due to vaccines.
The Food and Drug Administration expedited review of the vaccines because of the public health risks of the ongoing pandemic. All three vaccines in use in the U.S. were rolled out under an emergency use authorization, or EUA, which is typically less stringent than the full licensure, which is called a biologics license application, or BLA. However, the FDA added more rigorous requirements for a COVID-19 vaccine EUA.
Under a standard EUA, regulators must determine that the product “may be effective” and the “known and potential benefits outweigh the known and potential risks.” For these EUAs,