Back on February 3, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on the Today show and said of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine:
“The J&J data right now that we discussed last week is being reviewed with the FDA right now, so we could see literally within a week or so that they wind up getting the kind of emergency use authorization,” Fauci said. “I don’t want to get ahead of the FDA, but I would not be surprised if this happens within the next week or two.”
Unfortunately, the process will take more than a week or two. The next day, the FDA announced its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee would meet on February 26 to discuss the request for emergency-use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine from Janssen Biotech. (Janssen Biotech is the pharmaceutical part of Johnson and Johnson.) Once the committee meets, if it gives the vaccine the thumbs up, full FDA approval of the emergency-use authorization could come within a day or two.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles has run out of first doses, and its vaccination center won’t reopen until Tuesday.
Those couple million prepared doses that are currently sitting on warehouse shelves sure would come in handy right about now!