US health authorities advised vaccination sites to discontinue use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine to investigate rare cases of blood clots. The move comes after European health regulators said they had reports of clots in four people who received J & J’s shot, while also researching clotting in people who had received a Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford.
Why is the J&J vaccine being paused?
US health authorities recommended the break as they investigate six reported cases of blood clots, including one death. Six women, ages 18 to 48, were reported to have experienced the clots, as well as a low platelet count, which help clot.
The cases were extremely rare – more than 6.8 million doses of the injection have been given in the US so far – but the US Food and Drug Administration said it made the recommendation out of an abundance of caution. Regulators and researchers still don’t know whether the vaccines are causing the side effects, or something else.
What are the symptoms of blood clots that I should watch out for?
If you’ve received the J&J vaccine in the past three weeks, keep an eye out for symptoms such as severe headache, stomach pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath. If you have any of these symptoms that are different from the flu-like symptoms people have reported after vaccination, you should contact your doctor or another healthcare provider.
For each of the six cases of clotting, symptoms occurred six to 13 days after vaccination, while the flu-like symptoms usually appear within a day or so of vaccine administration.