Use of the J & J Vaccine for COVID-19 Can Resume, Says CDC Review Panel

In a 10 to 4 vote, a committee of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on April 23 decided to lift the temporary hold on using the COVID-19 vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson/Janssen. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC had temporarily halted vaccination with the J&J shot on April 13 after six reports of unusual blood clots in the brain occurred among nearly 7 million people vaccinated with the shot in the U.S. The panel of 15 independent experts was under some pressure to make a decision about the safety of the vaccine, which is the only single-shot vaccine for COVID-19 currently authorized in the U.S. But after an initial meeting on April 14, the group decided it needed more information. Over the past week, an additional nine cases of unusual blood clots, called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) were reported, bringing the total so far to 15 cases. All 15 have occurred in women, and most were in their 30s. However, since that’s still among several million people who had recently been vaccinated with the shot, CDC vaccine-safety experts still felt the overall risk is very small. To put those 15 cases in context, Dr. Sara Oliver, from the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and her team presented data from models they constructed to estimate how the 11-day pause in using the J&J vaccine affected COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and death. The models showed that if the vaccine were reinstated for ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news