WA officials expect ‘minimal disruption’ to vaccine efforts amid Johnson & Johnson pause
Washington state health officials Tuesday emphasized calm after putting Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine use on pause, following a recommendation from federal health officials amid a rare side effect being reported.
They also predicted “minimal disruption” of the state’s COVID-19 vaccine efforts amid the J&J pause.
Among the nearly 7 million doses administered nationwide, six women suffered a rare blood clotting side effect one to three weeks after receiving the shot, with one death among that group.
All of the women were under age 50, and no cases have been reported in Washington state, according to the state Department of Health.
The reaction also has not been reported with the other two COVID vaccines, Pfizer or Moderna, which received emergency use authorization nationwide before the J&J vaccine.
Guidance was issued Tuesday from the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommending providers pause administering the J&J vaccine as officials learned more about the rare side effect and instructed providers how to recognize the reaction and respond.
In a press briefing after issuing a formal statement pausing the vaccine, state DOH officials offered more details on what to look for and the rarity of such an event occurring.
The blood clots “can be in different parts of the body, including the brain, it can be in the the abdomen or the belly, it can be in extremities, etc. But that is a very rare occurrence, and happening in individuals,” said Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah. “So it is a less than one in a million chance of this side effect based on the information we have.”
The clots are combined with low platelet counts in the affected women, ranging in ages from 18 and 48, in a condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Officials have described it as a severe strokelike illness tied to low platelet counts.
“If you treat with a medicine called Heparin, it actually can be potentially more dangerous in that kind of a circumstance,” Shah told reporters Tuesday. “And so you have to move forward with different kinds of therapeutics.”
He added, “This pause allows the CDC and our federal partners to get information out to medical doctors and health care providers on how best to treat individuals who may come forth and say that I’m having symptoms and are determined to have a blood clot.”
He said fears over experiencing the rare event should not overtake receiving a vaccine against COVID-19.
While calling the rare reaction “unfortunate,” he added, “It should not take away from the fact that these three vaccines that we have are safe and effective. And this rarity of this side effect, again, one-in-a-million, while serious, it has to be reminded that this is rare in and of itself.”
With the pause, state and local officials on Tuesday moved away from administering Johnson & Johnson doses, including in Pierce County, where one event already scheduled was shifted to Moderna.
The action came one day after around 1,000 doses of the J&J vaccine were administered in Pierce County at two separate mass-vaccine events, one involving grocery and retail workers held in Tacoma, the other at a Key Peninsula mass vaccine clinic.
Pierce County’s Department of Emergency Management told The News Tribune it has distributed 2,484 J&J vaccines, while the Puyallup Tribal Health Authority, in a news release Tuesday, said it had administered 25 doses to its community members.
About 3,500 doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine have been administered so far in Pierce County, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department said in a Tuesday blog update, noting that the data may lag the actual count.
TPCHD, in its update, said it would “switch to the Moderna vaccine for any scheduled J&J appointments and continue to bring COVID-19 vaccine to everyone who is eligible in Pierce County.”
The state health officials at Tuesday’s briefing offered guidance for those who’d recently received the vaccine and noted the state would be reaching out to providers to help educate them when or if any response is needed.
“We’re now going back and looking at where J&J vaccine was shipped and delivered, where it may have been administered. So we can make contact with those providers directly. We’re going to ask those providers to also connect with the the individuals that they may have administered,” Shah said.
Shah also made clear on what symptoms people who’d received the vaccine in recent days or weeks should look for:
“People who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine over the last two to three weeks, and who develop severe headache or abdominal pain, like pain or shortness of breath, within those three weeks after vaccination — should absolutely contact their health care provider,” Shah said.
“It is really important that as we talk to our community members, that we make sure our community members know that the vast majority of people that have received Johnson & Johnson vaccine will not have any side effects.”
Washington was already set to receive lower numbers of the J&J vaccine in the next few weeks because of an earlier production mishap on the East Coast involving the vaccine, and noted that this pause should only cause “minimal disruption,” according to Shah.
The officials noted that j&j is only about 6 percent of the total vaccine received in the state, with the vast majority being Pfizer or Moderna.
About 320,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine have either come through the state allocation or the federal allocations to pharmacies and community health centers in the state, according to Michele Roberts, Assistant Secretary of Health. Of those, 160,000 have been administered and reported. The vaccine has been administered at around 650 sites statewide.
“We continue with Moderna and Pfizer for now, we’re confident that this vaccine pause for Johnson & Johnson will be lifted in a matter of time,” Roberts said. “And once that’s lifted, the appropriate discussions can be had with clinicians.
“We do believe that this vaccine is going to be back in the mix to be a third vaccine that can be delivered both safely and effectively to our community members,” she added.
This story was originally published April 13, 2021 at 12:27 PM with the headline "WA officials expect ‘minimal disruption’ to vaccine efforts amid Johnson & Johnson pause."
