President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said he would be surprised if Johnson & Johnson vaccines did not reach people’s arms again by Friday after the shots were linked to serious side effects in a small number of people.
“Well, I don’t know if there have been through the cases, but we will know that by Friday, and I would be very surprised, Margaret, if we don’t have a resumption in some form by Friday,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “A decision almost certainly will be made by Friday.”
Fauci added that “one of the possibilities would be to bring them back but to do it with some form of restriction or some form of warning.”
The infectious disease expert echoed his remarks in a separate interview and indicated that he doubts “very seriously” that top authorities will do away with the inoculation that makes up roughly 5% of the United States’s inventory.
JOHNSON & JOHNSON VACCINE PAUSE MAKES IT HARDER TO VACCINATE RELUCTANT, HARD-TO-REACH PATIENTS
“I doubt very seriously if they just cancel it,” he told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment. I don’t think it’s just going to go back and say, ‘OK, everything’s fine,’ and go right back. I think it’ll likely say, ‘OK, we’re going to use it. But be careful under these certain circumstances.’”
Last Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a joint recommendation to halt the usage of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six people reported exposure to “a rare and severe type of blood clot.” All cases observed were of women between the ages of 18 and 48.
“CDC will convene a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on Wednesday to further review these cases and assess their potential significance,” the two government agencies wrote at the time. “FDA will review that analysis as it also investigates these cases. Until that process is complete, we are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution.”
Both the CDC and FDA conceded that the side effects are “extremely rare,” though “COVID-19 vaccine safety is a top priority for the federal government.”
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The CDC has administered 209,406,814 vaccination doses of the 264,505,725 distributed so far. The U.S. has experienced a 5% uptick in coronavirus cases in the last two weeks with a 12% decline in deaths and an 8% increase in hospitalizations.
