New Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses will go to teachers when it arrives in Georgia next week

ATLANTA — Channel 2 Action News has learned the newly approved Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Georgia next week, and the first shipment will go toward teachers and educators.

Channel 2′s Matt Johnson has been in contact with state officials all week and found out that the order for the new vaccine was placed Thursday.

Experts said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be easier to distribute once it gets here and shouldn’t be thought of as a lesser vaccine.

One of those educators who will be eligible to get the vaccine starting Monday is Cat Kelly. She teaches children with special needs in Gwinnett County and told Johnson that she’s ready to get vaccinated.

“I am getting to the point where I’m just so anxious. I want to know ... when it’s my turn,” Kelly said. “I am very grateful that we are finally in a tier where we can get some kind of vaccination.”

But the kind of vaccine matters to her.

Johnson & Johnson’s data shows its vaccine is 100% effective at preventing deaths. It’s less effective at preventing cases than the two other authorized vaccines.

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“That makes me a little bit nervous with the Johnson & Johnson and to be honest,” Kelly said.

Experts who study vaccines said comparing the three vaccines together is tricky, and they’ve never been clinically tested head to head.

Testing for Moderna and Pfizer happened earlier in the pandemic before the coronavirus variants arrived.

Dr. Ted Ross at the University of Georgia said all three do the most important thing perfectly: prevent deaths and hospitalizations after 28 days.

“I don’t think it’s really a competition, which one is necessarily best percentage,” Ross said. “They definitely protect you against severe disease, which is one of the biggest hallmarks that we need to deal with as far as where people get hospitalized and end up on respirators.”

Paula Schirmer of Cobb County told Johnson that her husband spent 31 days in a coma last March before surviving COVID-19.

“My girls and myself were sick, too. So it was overwhelming. And I can tell you, I have PTSD from that,” Schirmer said.

Her whole family ended up fighting and surviving COVID-19 at the same time.

Schirmer is a health care worker and has already been vaccinated. But if she wasn’t, she told Johnson that she would take any authorized vaccine.

“I will encourage every, everyone that has the opportunity to get vaccine ... to do it,” Schirmer said.

For Kelly, she said she wants to avoid COVID-19 entirely and said she will take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine when it’s her turn.

“It’s still better than not having a vaccine in my body, to get my chance to give my body a chance to fight it off. I think I would take it,” Kelly said.

The Department of Public Health told Johnson that the order for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was placed Thursday after working with school systems and their vaccine partners to find out how many doses they would need.

The spokesperson said there were no delays in shipments, and the expectation is that shipments will get to Georgia on Monday and Tuesday.

Cox Media Group