Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made statements during a press conference with Press Secretary Jen Psaki at the White House in Washington, USA, on April 13, 2021 .
Tom Brenner | Reuters
The White House Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration’s recommended break on Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine use will give U.S. health regulators the time they need to thoroughly investigate how six women they developed a rare blood clotting disorder that left one dead.
Fauci said officials from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want to see if there are “any clues” and “find some common denominators among the women involved” that could allow the blood clotting disorder. blood known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis or CVST.
He also said the recommended break will make doctors aware of the problem. Doctors usually treat this type of blood clot with heparin, an anticoagulant, but Fauci said it could be dangerous in this case and noted that health officials recommended a different treatment.
“If someone comes in with this really quite rare thrombotic thrombocytopenia syndrome where thrombosis is obtained, the most common way to treat it would be with heparin,” Fauci said during a White House briefing. “That would be a mistake in this situation because this could be dangerous and make the situation worse.”
Of the 120 million people in the United States, approximately 6.9 million have received the J&J vaccine, Fauci said, noting that there has been no “red flag signal” for the Pfizer or Moderna Covid vaccines. 19 that rely on MRNA technology to fabricate their features. Of the 6.9 million people who received the J&J test, 6 developed blood clots, he said.
“We are fully aware that this is an infrequent event. We want this to be resolved as quickly as we can and that is why you are seeing the world stop, that is, you want to hold on a bit,” Fauci said. . “We want to leave this in the hands of the FDA and the CDC to investigate it carefully. I don’t think he was pressing the trigger too quickly.”
Fauci said the break could last between a few days and a few weeks. The CDC will also convene a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday to review the cases.
During a previous call Tuesday, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biological Evaluation and Research, said officials learned that blood clotting usually occurs about a week after vaccination. , but not more than three weeks later, with an average time period of 9 days.
“We know that for these vaccines, that during the first few days after vaccination, there are flu-like symptoms that may include headaches,” he said, adding that they are likely to be common side effects. “If someone came to an emergency room with a headache or very intense blood clots” doctors should ask themselves if they have recently been vaccinated before preparing a care plan. If the patient also has low platelets, doctors should consider that it could be related to the vaccine, he said.
He told reporters that researchers have not yet found a specific cause for blood clotting in J&J vaccine receptors, but believed it was similar to other viral adeno vector vaccines. “This is an immune response that occurs very, very rarely after some people get the vaccine and this immune response leads to the activation of extremely rare platelets and blood clots,” Marks said.