AFP: What makes the J&J vaccine such an important tool?Stoffels: The vaccine we just got approved by the European authorities is a single-shot vaccine, and it's the first vaccine which was studied on a very large scale (around 40,000 people), including the variants.
And we have shown high efficacy against severe disease as well as hospitalization and death.In addition, it's a single dose with stability that you ship at 2 to 8 Celsius, normal refrigeration, which will help facilitate large-scale implementation in the world.AFP: What's your response to criticism that J&J's shot isn't as protective as the RNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna?Stoffels: We did our study globally, on three continents: the US, South America, and South Africa,.