The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use on Saturday, according to a report by CNN. This is now the third vaccine approved for emergency use authorization (EUA), after ones developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

The FDA’s authorization follows a day after an advisory panel unanimously recommended that the vaccine receive approval.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine only requires one dose and does not require extremely cold storage, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and therefore should be easier to administer.

Dr. Esther Choo told CNN’s Pamela Brown that the approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was “really great news,” since this new vaccine “still has an outstanding safety profile and has the added benefit of tremendous convenience,” which will avoid some of the “huge logistical challenges” of the two-dose vaccines that require special storage and handling.

Johnson & Johnson reportedly has several million doses ready to ship and begin administering as early as next week, and Choo said that the expectations were that the pharmaceutical company would be able to quickly ramp up production to provide about 40 million doses by the end of March.

Choo also addressed the lower effectiveness rate of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in clinical studies, noting that it had been subjected to more stressful factors (and a likely more virulent strain of coronavirus) than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Nonetheless, Choo declared Johnson & Johnson’s product to be “an outstanding vaccine,” highlighting how it had shown 100 percent effectiveness in preventing death and hospitalization.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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