American experts recommend resuming vaccination with Johnson & Johnson

The vaccine is “recommended” for adults. A group assembled at the request of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the main US agency for public health, concluded Friday. The final decision will be made by Director of the CDC, Rochelle Walinski.

Experts from the US Health Authority on Friday recommended the resumption of vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States, which has been suspended since April 13 after rare cases of blood clots.

The vaccine is “recommended” for adults. A group assembled at the request of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the main US agency for public health, concluded Friday. The final decision will be made by Director of the CDC, Rochelle Walinski.

A break was recommended

The health authorities had announced a halt in the use of the vaccine, which was developed by the American laboratory to investigate several cases of women suffering from severe cases of blood clots linked to low levels of platelets after injection.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has already been given to 7.98 million people in the United States. According to the data provided on Friday, of the 3.99 million vaccinated women, 15 developed severe cases of blood clots, and three died. The majority (13 out of 15) were under 50, and the other two were between 50 and 64 years old. There were no known cases among the men who were vaccinated.

Some experts on Friday highlighted the benefits of this single-dose vaccine, which can be stored in refrigerators and easily reach vulnerable groups, in the face of very rare risks of thrombosis, which can have devastating neurological consequences even when not fatal. .

66% effective vaccine

The J&J vaccine has been shown to be 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe forms of Covid-19, according to clinical trials of nearly 40,000 people aged 18 years or over in several countries around the world.

Although the association with the vaccine has not been shown, scientists consider it the “probable cause” of this phenomenon, which was also discovered with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The European Medicines Agency said, Friday, that after a new study, the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine increased with age and continued to outweigh the risks, such as blood clots.

Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca use adenoviruses as a vector, such as the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and the Chinese CanSino vaccine. In addition to J&J, the United States primarily operates the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which use messenger RNA technology and require two injections.

President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that 200 million doses of anti-virus vaccines have been given in the United States, the most bereaved country in the world with more than 570,000 deaths from the virus. All adults in the United States have been eligible for vaccination since April 19.