In addition, federal regulators are concerned that the blood clotting seen with the J&J vaccine is the same type as seen globally with AstraZeneca’s vaccine. The AstraZeneca vaccine isn’t in use in the United States but has been authorized in more than 70 countries. The European Medicines Agency recently concluded that unusual blood clots with low blood platelets should be listed as “very rare side effects” on the AstraZeneca vaccine label. While advising the public to look out for signs of clots, the European regulators said the benefits of the shot were still worth the risk.
It also comes on the heels of questions faced by J&J regarding its rollout after a Baltimore subcontractor who was making its vaccine accidentally spoiled 15 million doses earlier in April. The problems at the facility were contributing to a drop in J&J doses this month.
2. But what does all this mean in terms of my risk?
More than 560,000 Americans have died of covid in the past year — or 1 in 586 people. An individual’s risk of dying of or being hospitalized with covid is far higher than the risk of getting a rare blood clot from the J&J vaccine.
Meanwhile, the risk of getting a blood clot is also far higher if you have covid.
To put the less-than-1-in-a-million risk of getting a severe blood clot from the J&J vaccine in perspective, people face a 1-in-500,000 chance each year of being struck by lightning.
“It’s important to keep these numbers in context,” Jonathan Watanabe, a pharmacist and an associate dean in the College of Health and Sciences at the University of California-Irvine, said of the rare blood clots. “While frightening, it’s a rare event.” The risk of blood clots associated with covid infection is actually greater, he added.
The pause, which FDA officials said they expect will be a few days, will give regulators time to alert doctors to the added risk and show them how to recognize and treat the clots and make reports to the government.
The CDC will convene a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices today to further review these cases and assess their potential significance. The committee could recommend adding the blood clot risk to the list of warnings about the vaccine or could recommend that certain populations avoid the vaccine.