Washington – Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, said Sunday that he believes there will be a decision on whether to end the pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine see you on Friday.
“Almost certainly a decision will be made on Friday,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with “Face the Nation.” “I don’t really anticipate that they will want to stretch it a little more, one way or another, make a decision about J&J. I don’t know what it will be, but thinking about what the possibilities are, one of the possibilities would be to get them back, but to do “With some kind of restriction or some kind of warning. But I think we’ll know the answer to that on Friday.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) jointly last week recommended a temporary “pause” on Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine use after six women reported a rare blood clotting disorder. Women, ages 18 to 48, experienced symptoms six to 13 days after receiving the shot from Johnson & Johnson.
Federal officials, including Fauci, noted that the side effects were incredibly rare, but said those who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should be alert to symptoms such as severe headaches, some difficulty moving, chest discomfort and difficulty. to breathe.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine accounted for a small fraction of the approximately 190 million doses that had been administered when U.S. health agencies called for a break last week. The White House said temporary retention was not expected to affect President Biden’s vaccination plan, as the government assured enough doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to keep pace with vaccinations.
Although a CDC advisory committee met last Wednesday to discuss Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine shutdown, its members did not vote on whether the break should be extended, citing insufficient data to make final recommendations.
Fauci said there could be gender-based restrictions on the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 trait, but urged caution because diseases so far have only been seen in six million people. . He also noted that there have been cases of rare blood clots with the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine in the European Union and the UK that have not been limited to women.
“That’s one of the points we want to take care of,” he said. “So you don’t want to get ahead of yourself and decide that you know the full spectrum of that, which is one of the reasons they stopped and why we hope to know on Friday.”
The pause in Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine has raised concerns that it could lead to greater hesitation, but Fauci stressed that each of the three FDA-approved vaccines (from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson) are highly effective.
“The only thing we need to emphasize when it comes to safety is that people don’t have to extrapolate a break with one vaccine to the other vaccines,” he said. “For example, the same surveillance system that J & J’s six women picked up was the same surveillance system that CDC and the FDA use with the Modern product and the Pfizer product. And so far there have been no red flags that , even though you already know, tens, tens, and tens of millions of people have been vaccinated with these vaccines, so one of the things you can get out of all of this is that when the surveillance system, the CDC and the FDA they say something is safe, you can be sure it is safe “.
The United States has administered 3 to 4 million daily doses of coronavirus vaccines daily and to date has given about 206 million shots. Nearly 40% of the total U.S. population has received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to the CDC.
To keep the infection rate low, Fauci said it is crucial to continue with the current vaccination rate, adding that mitigation measures should not be relaxed right now, as the U.S. still reports between 60,000 and 70,000 new infections a day.
“I think it would not be prudent to declare victory prematurely and withdraw,” he said. “Certainly, as we continue each day to vaccinate more people, that rate will decrease if we don’t give the virus a chance to essentially increase.”
Fauci said if Americans “stay a little longer, I think we’ll be fine.”
“We’ll get to the point where we can do things again like we did before,” he said. “But we have to make sure we vaccinate as many people as we can.”
Fauci predicted that Americans will know in late summer if they will need a booster shot to protect themselves from new coronavirus strains.