Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine has been paused in the US after six women developed rare blood clots, including one who has died and another who is in the hospital in a critical condition, in a move that doctors say delivers a ‘devastating blow’ to the country’s vaccine program.
Seven million people in the US have had the one-shot vaccine already. The percentage of people who have developed blood clots from it is 0.00008.
In the US, 0.27 percent of the population suffer from Deep Vein Thrombosis – a more severe form of blood clot – every year.
The US has another 10million doses of the J&J vaccine stockpiled. It has ordered 200million doses in total.
The CDC and FDA say that there is not enough data yet to revoke its authorization entirely, but that they want to stop the roll-out out of an ‘abundance of caution’ until they know more.
After their announcement on Tuesday, J&J said it was halting its rollout in Europe, where tens of millions of doses were expected to be given out, including 30million in the UK, in the summer.
The women who developed blood clots are all aged between 18 and 48. One of them – who has not been identified – died and another, who also hasn’t been identified but officials say is in Nebraska, is in a critical condition. The experts do not yet know if the six women affected have other underlying illnesses – including if they take the oral contraceptive pill which is known to increase a woman’s chances of developing blood clots – and they also do not know how long the pause will last.
One of the biggest problems is not the blood clotting itself, but that traditional treatments like heparin can cause ‘tremendous harm’ or be ‘fatal’ if the patient recently had the J&J vaccine.
There is now criticism over the pause which has sparked fear among those who have already had the vaccine, confusion among people who are yet to get it (since it has not been completely banned), and increased hesitancy among those who were already skeptical.
Despite the White House claiming it will not thwart their goals of vaccinating 200million Americans by April 30 and every American from May onwards, health industry experts say it delivers a ‘devastating’ blow to the vaccine effort and will undoubtedly slow it down.
Dr. Kavita Patel said “This is a devastating blow to this J&J vaccine effort in the United States. Johnson and Johnson was incredibly useful for mobile vaccination. You could just do one shot…this is definitely going to cause a ripple effect in our attempt in the United States. In the next one to three weeks, we just can’t substitute it. This will delay our vaccination efforts,’