Hundreds of thousands of vaccines are headed to New York, and medical experts say everyone should take the first dose made available, regardless of the manufacturer.
The governor's office just announced New York will be receiving almost 165,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine this week.
With over 700,000 first and second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine also coming to New York, this is the state's highest ever weekly allocation - meaning more people can soon be vaccinated.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the Johnson & Johnson drug has much less restrictive protocols for transporting and storing the vaccine.
News 12 reached to county officials to see if they knew how many doses they were getting of the J&J vaccine, but they say they have not heard from the state. The governor's office says they are still finalizing a priority list and distribution plan.
Westchester County Executive George Latimer says he's been hearing that people have concerns that the J&J vaccine has a lower efficacy rate.
The state's Clinical Advisory Task Force unanimously recommends that people take the J&J vaccine. The vaccine is 72% effective in all forms of disease. It's also 86% effective against severe forms of the disease.
News 12 is told that J&J also plans to test its vaccine in newborns, infants and pregnant women. J&J will be the first to test its vaccine on infants and newborns.
"Historically pregnant women, children, you know these kinds of groups have not been included in a lot of the major medical trials and so there's kind of a little bit of a barrier to care for them in terms of these kind of newer technologies," says Pavan Ananth, assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University and attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital.
Ananth says all of the preliminary data on the vaccine in pregnant women has been positive.
J&J will deliver about 16 million more doses by the end of the month and 100 million total by the end of June.