COLUMBUS, Ohio — A retired elementary teacher, Nancy Heber, 84, teared up Tuesday as she became one of the first five recipients to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which she says will allow see her to finally see her son who lives in Colorado.

A gardener in retirement, Heber said her first stop once she has immunity is the nursery. 

“After my two weeks, I plan to go to the garden store because I'm quite a horticulturist, and I have over the years had my garden open to the public, which, of course, you can’t do now,” the class of ‘57 Ohio State alum said Tuesday after getting a shot at her alma mater. “To the garden store, here I come."

According to Wexner Medical Center officials, the hospital received 300 doses of the single-shot vaccine on Tuesday for its Schottenstein Center vaccine clinic, where five shots of the newly-authorized vaccine were administered at 2:45 p.m. They are believed to be the first doses administered in the U.S., officials said. 

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is an adenovirus vaccine, and it uses a different technology than Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines, which means it comes with some advantages and disadvantages, according to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Infectious Disease Director Dr. Paul Spearman.

The vaccine was 66% effective in global trials, a less impressive figure than what was demonstrated by the mRNA vaccines, but Johnson & Johnson’s efficacy is more impressive when it comes to stopping serious disease, Spearman said. In fact, it’s “way better than some of our standard vaccines that we have approved in the past,” he said.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine may be a good option for those who were hesitant about mRNA vaccines because the technology was new. The J&J Janssen vaccine uses a version of a virus that can cause a cold or respiratory infection, but this strain generates the immune response to COVID-19 when the virus produces the spike glycoprotein.

“It's not exactly your conventional vaccine — we often think of conventional vaccines as killed vaccines or protein vaccines — but it has been around for quite a while, so the technology is not new,” Spearman said. “That might be comforting to some people to whom the mRNA vaccine seems a little bit mysterious.”

Adenovirus vaccine technology has been studied extensively in children and adenovirus vaccine development is underway for disease like Ebola. “The track record that we've seen so far with those vaccines also looks very safe,” Spearman said. 

There is no risk of contracting the virus from the technology, he added. 

“The viral vector does not keep replicating in a person. It basically does a single round of replication, produces the protein, and then is cleared,” Spearman said. 

And as a one-dose regimen that does not require ultra cold temperatures like the mRNA vaccine, the rollout is expected to be far simpler from a logistics standpoint. 

“It's going to work,” Spearman said. “It looks very good, and if we didn't have the others to compare the numbers to, I think we'd all be saying this is a great success.”