US expects to have adequate supply of Covid vaccines despite J&J pause

Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg

The US expects to have enough coronavirus vaccine to meet the demand by May, even with a pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s shot – but a prolonged stop would turn some of President Joe Biden’s goals upside down and extend the effort to vaccinate as many Americans as possible.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration said in a joint statement Tuesday that they would discontinue use of the J&J shot after six women who received it developed a rare and serious form of blood clotting. The FDA said the pause would be a matter of days.

J & J’s offside, however temporary, leaves the US with two other shots that have already made up the bulk of their vaccination campaign — from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. Vaccines from those two companies account for 95% of the shots allocated in the US this week.

The White House said there is enough vaccine to keep injecting at their current rate. “This announcement will not significantly affect our vaccination plan,” Jeff Zients, the Covid-19 White House response coordinator, said in a statement.

Pfizer and Moderna supplies will be sufficient to meet US demand, an official speaking on condition of anonymity said, as signs emerge that the US is starting to shift from a shortage of shots to a shortage of willing receivers.

The US expects to have received enough doses of Pfizer and Moderna by the end of May to fully vaccinate 200 million people. It expects enough doses from those companies by the end of July to vaccinate an additional 100 million.

Still, any long delay in using a single injection could fuel the hesitation of the vaccine and cast doubt on some of Biden’s promises. Biden’s team has repeatedly said that all shots are safe and urged the Americans to take whatever they could.

Biden relied on J&J when he announced that the US will have enough photos for all adults by the end of May, officials have regularly quoted in recent weeks, but Zients did not repeat that in his statement on Tuesday.

Biden has also pledged to increase equality in vaccinations, which have so far gone disproportionately to whites in a pandemic that has disproportionately sick or killed people of color. The J&J shot was widely used in pharmacies and community health centers, targeting communities at risk, although Pfizer and Moderna still make up the vast majority of injections used in those programs.

J & J’s inclusion, which does not require the same cold storage conditions as Moderna and Pfizer, can also reduce the number of sites managing the capture if use is interrupted for an extended period of time. That would threaten Biden’s promise to make the vaccine available within a 5-mile radius of 90% of Americans. Biden’s team has stressed the need to make vaccines easily accessible.