S regulators to green light It's Cove in 19 vaccine for emergency use on Thursday and says it will apply to European authorities in the coming weeks.

The company's application to the U.

S Food and Drug Administration follows its report last week, which said it's vaccine had a 66% success rate of preventing moderate and severe disease in its global trial.

That's less than the currently authorized Pfizer Bio and Tech and Madonna shots, which were 95% effective, and global trials.

But studies on those shots were carried out before the highly contagious new variants of the virus appeared to have emerged.

J and J's vaccine is single dose and could help boost supplies and simplify the US vaccination campaign as concerns emerge over the potential of lower vaccine efficacy against the new variants.

Unlike the two other vaccines, J and J's shot also doesn't need to be shipped frozen.

The US has agreed to pay $1 billion for 100 million doses, which J and J said it expected to supply in the first half of the year.

The company aims to deliver one billion doses this year with production in the United States, Europe, South Africa and India, the FDA said Thursday evening.

It's scheduled a meeting on February 26th to discuss the company's request for emergency use authorization.

Both Pfizer and Madonna's vaccines were authorized just a day after those meetings.