Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine won clearance from the European Union’s drugs regulator, making it the fourth jab to get the green light for the 27-nation bloc.
"This is the first vaccine which can be used as a single dose," Emer Cooke, chief of the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA), said in a statement.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended that the EU approve the vaccine. The European Commission must now rubber-stamp the decision before the product can be distributed.
Meanwhile, the European Commission has said the EU authorisation to the single-dose vaccine will follow shortly.
The clearance paves the way for the first single-injection shot to help bolster the region’s sluggish vaccination campaign.
"With this latest positive opinion, authorities across the European Union will have another option to combat the pandemic and protect the lives and health of their citizens," Cooke said in a statement.
The US pharma giant filed on February 16 for approval for the vaccine, developed by its Belgian subsidiary Janssen.
The EU has so far approved three vaccines -- Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford.
Three other vaccines are also under "rolling review" by the Amsterdam-based EMA -- Novavax, CureVac and Russia's Sputnik.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is easier to store. The shot however appears less protective than Pfizer and Moderna's regimes, which both have an efficacy of around 95% against all forms of Covid-19 from the classic coronavirus strain.
