An advisory panel to the CDC is meeting Friday to possibly lift the pause on the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which was triggered by rare cases of blood clots.
If regulators give the green light for shots to resume, precautions may be taken.
Most experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, think the panel will recommend the resumption of J&J shots, but with warnings to clinicians to look for high risk patients: people with low blood platelets, most notably in women on birth control pills.
The clots of concern are rare, but the pause was triggered because they can't be treated the usual way, which is with a thinner such as heparin.
"We do that with this, we may cause blood leakage in the brain, which could be severe, in addition to that might not be the actual way we treat it," said Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. "So, it does necessitate a pause on us as clinicians, to understand how to identify it and best modalities to treat it because even if one person gets it, the promise of medicine is we’ve got to still help you through that."
It’s believed the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks of clotting.
Nearly 7 million people nationwide, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have received the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine.
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