The US health authority CDC is asking governments to stop vaccinations with the Janssen vaccine. France does not listen to this, but limits the target group to people over 55, just as with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
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Gabriel Attal, spokesman for the French government, said on Wednesday that France will continue vaccinations with the Janssen vaccine ‘as planned’. Only people over 55 are eligible, as is the case with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which works in a similar way and has also been linked to rare cases of blood clots.
The virus is ‘very active’ in circulation in France, Attal says. Hospitals are still waiting for ‘difficult days’. The French are struggling to force the level of infections below the second peak, in the autumn of last year. For the country, the advantages of a rapid vaccination are also greater here than the small chance of the rare possible side effect.
CDC calls for suspension
The US health authorities called FDA and the CDC Tuesday immediately suspend the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six cases of a rare and dangerous combination of blood clots (thrombosis) and low platelet counts (thrombocytopenia) had been detected in women between the ages of 18 and 48 year. A 45-year-old woman died and three others were hospitalized. Johnson & Johnson then postponed deliveries to Europe and also asked to stop the vaccination temporarily.
The fourteen members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) sat together for hours on Wednesday for an emergency meeting, but want to gather additional information before formulating a recommendation for the future. A new consultation will take place within a week at the earliest.
Vulnerable groups
Several members of the ACIP panel initially wanted to extend the break by one month, the news agency reports Reuters. But Dr. Beth Bell, a health expert at the University of Washington and member of the ACIP, argued that this would send a worldwide signal that there is a major problem with the vaccine. “I do not want to send that message to the world because I do not agree with it,” he said. “It’s a very rare condition,” she said about the combination of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia. “Nothing is risk free.”
Other panelists, on the other hand, were concerned that an extension of the pause would complicate the vaccination process in hard-to-reach communities in the country. The vaccine is important for those groups because, unlike other vaccines, it can be stored at normal refrigerator temperature and only requires one dose instead of two. “Any extension of the pause will inevitably leave the most vulnerable in the United States vulnerable,” said ACIP member Nirav Shah.
Seventh case
The CDC experts were notified of a seventh case of the rare thrombosis on Wednesday, according to CNN. Johnson & Johnson initially said there was no link between the condition and the vaccine. The experts of the ACIP will inform themselves in the coming days and want to set a date for the next meeting by Friday, in which recommendations can be formulated.
For example, the ACIP may recommend that Johnson Johnson’s vaccine only be used in people over 50. A similar age limit also exists in several European countries for the AstraZeneca vaccine, after similar thromboses were observed after the vaccine administration. However, the experts currently have too little information to draw any conclusions.
More than 7.2 million doses of the Janssen vaccine have been administered in the US since the end of February. In the country, 562,000 people died from Covid-19.
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