The pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has, in some areas of the nation, made it hard to get shots into the arms of people who are homebound, live long distances from vaccination sites, or are generally reluctant to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson is a one-dose vaccine, something that some people find convenient, especially if their primary mode of transportation to a hospital is an airplane.
“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is … more convenient for people to utilize when they have difficulty scheduling a second dose,” said Shirley Young, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. “For instance, if someone flies in from a rural area to Anchorage in order to have surgery and hasn’t yet been vaccinated, then the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would be a good fit.”
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended pausing the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six women had developed rare blood clots within six to 13 days of receiving the vaccine.
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On Wednesday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the body within the CDC charged with making recommendations on vaccines, met to discuss the safety issues, but it adjourned without making a decision. The committee has scheduled another meeting on April 23. Until then, the pause remains in place.
The two remaining vaccines approved for use in the United States, Pfizer and Moderna, are both two-dose vaccines that require the shots to be given three to four weeks apart.
That is a concern for Dr. Carolyn Salter, a primary care physician who runs the Sycamore Medical Clinic in Palestine, Texas.
“A lot of the African American community here do not have access to transportation,” Salter said. “In a lot of rural areas, there is no taxi, no Uber. People have to rely on friends and family to get to a vaccination clinic. For them, ‘one and done’ makes sense.”
Salter had been working with a local African American church that was going to shuttle some people in for a vaccination clinic. Since many of the congregants lived in remote areas, she was going to inoculate them with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The clinic was scheduled for last Thursday.
“That fell through because of the pause,” Salter said.
She has also encountered a lot of needle-phobia and hesitancy to get the vaccine among the African American community. The acceptance rate among her patients was higher for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
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“If it was the only shot I’d had to this point, I would have been happy to only have Johnson & Johnson,” Salter said.
The pause has also proved difficult for Pam Chatman, the founder of Boss Lady Workforce Transportation, a shuttle service that provides residents in the Mississippi Delta with transportation to their places of employment. In February, she launched the Vaccine Transportation Initiatives, which partners her shuttles with healthcare providers to provide the vaccine to people who live in remote areas.
“The purpose was to get people to the nearest clinic, although for many that was often 25 to 30 miles away,” she said. “When we started this, one of the things that almost everybody we talked to wanted to know about was the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.”
For some, it was a matter of convenience. Many of the people Chatman transports are homebound. Traveling only once for a vaccine is simpler than having to go twice.
For others, it was a matter of reluctance.
“For some, I think they were skeptical of the vaccine, but if they were going to get it, they wanted to take it only one time,” Chatman said.
She noted that at many clinics she transported people to, there were long lines for the Johnson & Johnson tent and very few people in the Moderna tent.
Chatman had recently worked with healthcare providers to start a program to bring vaccinations to people in their homes, a program that was supposed to begin last week.
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“But most of the people wanted the Johnson & Johnson, and that put the program on hold,” she said.
