New York's pause on Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine impacting some distribution sites

New York's pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is impacting vaccine distribution for some sites.

News 12 Staff

Apr 14, 2021, 12:30 PM

Updated 1,277 days ago

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New York's pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is impacting vaccine distribution for some sites.
The St. Manuel Baptist Church in Clinton Hill was scheduled to open as a pop-up vaccination site for the Johnson & Johnson dose.
Senior Pastor Anthony L. Trufant took to Twitter to update potential vaccine recipients as to the church's status as a vaccine site.
"We will be postponing the event. In the meantime, we're reaching out to see whether or not we can secure one of the other two vaccines that have been effective and have had no side effects that we know of, so stay posted, we'll let you know what's what," Trufant said.
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The CDC and FDA recommended the pause after six women between ages 18 and 48 developed the blood clots. One of them died and another is in critical condition.
Health officials said the cases are rare, considering that there were only six cases out of 7 million people who have been vaccinated so far.
"These complications that we have seen may or may not be connected to the vaccine, but even if they are, they are rare. Very rare. Second thing to understand is that the other vaccines that people are receiving, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, are not implicated with these findings of these severe clots," said Dr. Vivek Murthy.
Meantime, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said recipients who were scheduled to receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be rescheduled and get Moderna or Pfeizer vaccine instead.
The pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a scenario for which the White House said it was prepared.
"We're prepared for a wide range of scenarios, and that's why the president took action earlier this year before the J&J vaccine was even authorized to secure enough Pfizer and Moderna doses for 300 million Americans by the end of July," said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients who added that this shouldn't affect the current goals in place. "We have more than enough supply of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to continue the current pace of about 3 million shots per day, and that puts us well on pace to meet the president's goal of 200 million shots by his 100th day in office."
Meanwhile, Moderna who said preliminary results from their phase 3 trial shows the Moderna vaccine is more than 90% effective for at least six months after vaccination and more than 95% effective against severe disease.
The FDA also Moderna and Pfizer will likely protect against coronavirus for at least nine months, although more research is needed and booster shots may be needed down the line.