COVID-19 vaccinators in Missouri can resume use of Johnson and Johnson’s “Janssen” vaccination, state health regulators said last Friday.
The announcement from the Missouri …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
We have recently launched a new and improved website. To continue reading, you will need to either log into your subscriber account, or purchase a new subscription.
If you are a digital subscriber with an active subscription, or you are a print subscriber who had access to our previous wesbite, then you already have an account here. Just reset your password if you have not yet logged in to your account on this new site.
If you are a current print subscriber and did not have a user account on our previous website, you can set up a free website account by clicking here.
Otherwise, click here to view your options for subscribing.
Please log in to continue |
COVID-19 vaccinators in Missouri can resume use of Johnson and Johnson’s “Janssen” vaccination, state health regulators said last Friday.
The announcement from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services followed a brief investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control. Regulators were examining the risk of rare, but serious blood clotting connected to the J&J vaccine. The federal agencies recommended last week that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks.
Missouri, along with many other states, put a moratorium on the use of the J&J vaccine while the week-long federal study was conducted.
Missouri health care providers who have been holding doses of the J&J vaccine were given permission to immediately resume their deployment on April 23. Distribution to providers was set to resume this week, with just over 105,000 doses already administered in Missouri prior to the pause, the state health department said.
The health department said there have been no reported cases in Missouri of the type of blood clot connected with the J&J vaccine. Nearly all of the reported cases in the U.S. have been in adult women younger than 50, according to the CDC.
Although the condition is extremely rare, health officials recommend that people who develop severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath within three weeks of receiving the J&J vaccine should immediately contact their health care provider.
In its recommendation that vaccinators resume use of the J&J vaccine, the CDC added that women younger than 50 should be aware that the risk of the adverse side effect exists, and that a similar risk has not been reported for other COVID vaccine options.
An examination of reports from across the U.S. found 15 women who developed blood clotting after the J&J vaccination, according to the CDC. That’s out of more than 8 million doses that had been distributed.
The CDC calculates that the chance for a woman under 50 to experience the blood clotting is about 7 women per 1 million women vaccinated. The condition is even more rare for women over 50 and for men of all ages.
