Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus, recently said the pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may actually help more people get vaccinated.
Fauci on Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause
Fauci spoke with Savannah Guthrie on the “Today” show about the pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration released a statement that charged for a pause of the vaccine after it found “a rare & severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the vaccine. Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare.”
Fauci said the pause “could actually diminish vaccine hesitancy.”
- “The very fact that you have … the CDC and the FDA looking so carefully at this, making safety the primary concern, in my mind, confirms or underscores the situation that we take safety very seriously.”
Fauci told the “Today” show that the pause “is going to take days to weeks, as opposed to weeks to months.”
- “This is a rare occurrence. The pause is just an abundance of caution to scope out the situation a little bit more closely.”
Why is the pause happening?
The CDC and FDA paused the vaccine’s rollout after it found six women from 18 to 48 years old suffered blood clots after getting that specific vaccine, as I wrote for the Deseret News. The clots happened about 13 days after the vaccinations. The FDA said their findings were based on six cases reported out of 6.8 million total administered doses of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
Fauci said Tuesday that the FDA and the CDC will use the pause to seek “any clues” to “find some common denominators among the women who were involved” who suffered the blood clots, CNBC reports.
- “We are totally aware that this is a rare event. We want to get this worked out as quickly as we possibly can and that’s why you see the world pause, in other words, you want to hold off for a bit,” Fauci said, as I wrote for the Deseret News. “We want to leave that up to the FDA and the CDC to investigate this carefully. I don’t think it was pulling the trigger too quickly.”