CDC Not Comfortable Lifting the Pause of J & J Vaccines for at Least a Week

  An independent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel met today to discuss when it recommended to lift the pause in administering Johnson & Johnson vaccine, however, after several doctors on the committee said that they were not comfortable lifting the pause without more data and decided to leave the pause in place until they get more information.

   The CDC panel, which CDC Dr. Amanda Cohn said would meet again in a week to 10 days, decided yesterday, together with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to recommend a pause in all distribution of the J&J vaccine after six women, one of whom died, suffered rare blood clots after getting the one-dose shot. 

  Although only six patient out of a total nearly 7 million people have been given the one-shot vaccine, the CDC and the FDA, who said the chances of blood clots after the shots were around 1 in 1 million recommended the pause to be cautious.

  In addition to the risk of blood clots, the CDC and the FDA recommended a pause in the use of the J & J vaccine so that they would have some time to notify healthcare worker that heparin, the usual medicine that doctors prescribe for blood clots, “does not work in this situation,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo today on a conference call today.

   CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and the White House coronavirus response team said the pause was intended as a precaution and to ensure confidence in the vaccine.

   "Right now, we believe these events to be extremely rare, but we are also not yet certain we have heard about all possible cases as this syndrome may not be easily recognized as one associated with the vaccine," Walensky said at a White House briefing on Wednesday.

   Despite the influx of J & J vaccines that was expected to help the US to vaccinate all Americans by the end of May, the White House maintained today that the pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines would not affect that goal.

Darren McGee- Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)