Federal health agencies call to pause Johnson & Johnson vaccine after clotting cases

Federal health agencies requested an abrupt pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine after six U.S. recipients developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within nearly two weeks of vaccination, officials said on Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced the news on Twitter and will reportedly stop distributing the vaccine at federal sites and encourage states to do so while an investigation is underway for safety issues.

“Today FDA and @CDCgov issued a statement regarding the Johnson & Johnson #COVID19 vaccine. We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” the FDA announced at 7 a.m.

The six recipients who suffered the blood clots were women between the ages of 18 and 48, officials said. One woman died, and a second woman in Nebraska has been hospitalized in critical condition.

Around 6.8 million people in the country have received the single-dose vaccine so far, and roughly 9 million more doses have been shipped out to states, according to data from the CDC.

It is unclear how a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will set back the Biden administration's agenda to deliver enough vaccines to be able to inoculate all adults in the United States by the end of May.

Out of 34 million recipients who took the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in Britain, the European Union, and three other countries, 222 people reported blood clots that were linked with a low level of platelets, 0.00065% of the entire group.