A recommendation by the federal government to pause using Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine will remain in place after an advisory panel put off a vote on how to move as they examine six reports of life-threatening blood clots.
The development, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes after U.S. health officials on Tuesday advised that health care providers pause administering J&J’s coronavirus shot after a 45-year-old woman died after receiving the single-shot vaccine. Three others remain in the hospital, and two among that group are in intensive care the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC on vaccination policy, said Wednesday it needs more information about the risk of the unusual side effects to determine whether the vaccine should be continued, discontinued or recommended only for certain groups.
The CDC had issued an alert on Tuesday warning health care providers to screen for the blood-clotting condition among patients who recently received the J&J vaccine.
“I do not want to vote on this issue today,” Beth Bell, clinical professor of global health at the University of Washington and a voting member of the committee said, according to WSJ. “I just don’t feel we have enough information to make an evidence-based decision.”
The ACIP had met to review clinical data gathered on six women who developed clots after receiving J&J’s vaccine.
Bell said the committee needed to clarify just how low the threat is for the blood-clotting condition to effectively weigh the J&J vaccine’s risks and benefits.
J&J has said the company is “aware of an extremely rare disorder involving people with blood clots in combination with low platelets in a small number of individuals who have received our COVID-19 vaccine,” and is working with health authorities.
White House Covid-19 response coordinator, Jeff Zients said Tuesday that there was “more than enough supply” of the Pfizer and Moderna two-shot vaccines to keep up a pace of vaccinations of 3 million shots per day, as the matter is examined more closely.
The ACIP is expected to meet again in the coming weeks to revisit the J&J issue.
“Clinical data on six women”
So just save the J&J jab for the boys.
What’s not obvious about this?
OT: Put this in another thread too, but it’s time for Dems to brag a little. A year+ of weekly UI claims being higher than the PEAK of the Great Recession and we finally broke the streak! It’s almost like addressing the issues people and businesses are having is more effective than tax cuts for billionaires and doing nothing.
That can certainly be done here and in other wealthy countries. In the developing world, the J&J and AstraZeneca (which are essentially the same, using adenovirus vectors) are really the only viable option. The Pfizer and Moderna are simply not usable in countries where -70C freezers are non-existent.
These rare reactions are serious, but the risks of dying- 1 in 200,000 even in the group of women 18-49-are still less than the risks of dying from Covid. Once doctors are all aware of the reaction and how to treat it, the risks will go down even further.
This is pretty much what I suspected:
The risk of contracting blood clots is about the same in Pfizer ‘s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines as in AstraZeneca ‘s, according to a study released on Thursday.
Researchers at the University of Oxford, the same university that helped develop drug company AstraZeneca vaccine, found that the rare blood clotting known as cerebral venous thrombosis occurred in four in a million people receiving the vaccines from drug company Pfizer and biotech Moderna.
That compares to five in a million people after the first dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, they said.
In both cases, the risk of blood clots is much higher in those who contract the Covid-19 virus. CVT occurred in 39 in a million patients, the researchers said.
Study Link:
I’m sure the numbers are similar here as they are in the UK. The US just doesn’t make the information public. I have a pretty good idea why.
Added:
This study does not mention ITP ( immune thrombocytopenic purpura) Another clotting disorder associated with 20 cases in the US mostly after the first vaccination with mRNA vaccines. Some very good information on this was published March 25th here:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/91813.
From a new Swedish paper (with Swedish sentence structure). I haven’t heard much about when covid-recovered persons should get vaccinated, but this gives some direction.