Dr Robert Klugman at the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Massachusetts said about the US federal health agencies’ recommendation to pause use of the Johnson & Johnson jab:
The FDA recommendation to pause the administration of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine out of an abundance of caution makes sense in terms of the nature of the unusual and serious side-effect.
[...] While the incidence is very low, the severity and potential for brain damage and other blood clot-related injuries is of great concern.
Dr Amesh Adalja, infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, told Reuters:
It’s important to remember the ‘hold’ is only on federal vaccine sites – not all.
I think this is a very low risk issue, even if causally linked to the vaccine: six cases with about 7m doses (lower than the risk of clots with oral contraceptives) is not something to panic about, but the federal government has been overly cautious with many aspects of this pandemic.
People are asking me if they should cancel their J&J vaccine appointments and I have told them not to. But I know many well and this will stall progress in controlling the pandemic.
Eleanor Riley, professor of immunology and infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh, said:
Whilst a causal link between Covid-19 vaccination, platelet abnormalities and blood clots has not, so far, been confirmed, the index of suspicion is rising that these rare cases may be triggered by the adenovirus component of the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines.
Whilst more data need to be collected, and the implications carefully considered, it remains the case that for the vast majority of people the risks associated with contracting Covid-19 far, far outweigh any risk of being vaccinated.
Moreover, increasing awareness of the possibility of such side-effects means that they should be diagnosed more quickly and treated more successfully.