The Centre is in talks with United States based pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson regarding its single dose Covid-19 vaccine, said NITI Aayog Member Dr V K Paul, reports Times of India.

Pault further said that as per the plan, the single-shot J&J Covid vaccine will also be manufactured in India by Biological E.

According to the results of the pre-print phase 3 trials, the J&J vaccine has shown strong neutralising antibody activity against the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, the , with immunity lasting at least eight months.

J&J on Thursday (2 July) announced that its jab showed promising signs of protection against the delta variant which is rapidly spreading in many countries of the world including the US.

In addition, the data showed that the durability of the immune response lasted through at least eight months, the length of time evaluated to date. The two preprint study summaries have been submitted to bioRxiv by the company.

A single dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine generated neutralizing antibodies against a range of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, which increased over time (the average neutralizing titer at eight months exceeded that average at 29 days), including against the increasingly prevalent and more transmissible Delta variant, the partially neutralization-resistant Beta, the Gamma variants and others, including the Alpha, Epsilon, Kappa, and D614G variants, as well as the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, the company said in a statement.