Another COVID-19 vaccine will soon be available for people in BC.
According to Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Johnson and Johnson (J&J) vaccine will be arriving in a limited supply, and she added that healthcare workers get first dibs.
“We have not received it yet, but we are expecting to receive some here, a limited amount here in British Columbia, hopefully by early next week,” said Henry.
The J&J vaccine is a viral vector vaccine, which is the same type as the AstraZeneca, but only one dose is currently needed to be considered fully vaccinated.
“For anyone else, and I know there has been a lot of people reaching out to me asking for the J&J vaccine. We will have some available, and we will be providing you with the details next week on how you can access this through a central call number,” added Henry.
She said that they were hoping for other potential vaccines to be accessible by now.
“I will say there are other vaccines in the pipeline, and we were very hopeful, for example, that Novavax, which is a more traditional protein subunit type vaccine would be available before now.”
Novavax has had some issues with clinical trials and manufacturing, but Henry expects we could have access to it next year.