As J & J ’s COVID-19 Vaccine Remains Shelved, Who Will Be Most Affected?

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended on April 14 that states shelve doses of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine for at least a week while regulators investigate the cases of six recipients who developed blood clots within two weeks of their inoculations. Even though the pause will be longer than some expected, the pace of the U.S. rollout is unlikely to slow significantly—so long as a wide percentage of the population remains willing to participate. In the five weeks since the Department of Health and Human Services first began allocating doses of the one-shot J&J vaccine alongside the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna varieties (both of which were given emergency use authorization last December), it has earmarked just 11.2 million doses of J&J compared to 130.3 million of the other two, according to TIME’s tally of the official allotments in that timespan. While that 8% share may grow as Johnson & Johnson hustles to expand its production capacity, it will continue to trail behind Pfizer and Moderna, which are on the hook to deliver a combined 600 million doses to the U.S. by the end of July. Pfizer, meanwhile, said this week that it would boost deliveries by another 10% in response to the J&J hiatus. Who will be most affected in the interim? As it stands, the 7.5 million J&J doses that have reached arms across the U.S. has swung heavily toward patients under age 65, according to TIME’s analysis...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news