C.D.C. Panel Keeps Pause on Use of J&J Vaccine, Citing Need to Assess Potential Risks

An advisory committee debated the very few cases of a rare blood disorder and worried about the suspension’s effect on global needs for a one-shot, easy-to-ship vaccine.

The pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine may continue for a week to 10 days, after expert advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined on Wednesday that they needed more time to assess a possible link to a rare but serious blood-clotting disorder. The decision not to reinstate the vaccine has painful consequences, nationally and globally. It may further erode public confidence in vaccination in general and slow the rollout of desperately needed shots to rural and underserved areas and homebound people. The vaccine is considered ideal for hard-to-reach people and places because it requires only one shot and is more easily stored and shipped than the vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which must be kept at very low temperatures. “Putting this vaccine on pause, for those of us that are frontline health care workers, has really been devastating,” Dr. Camille Kotton of Harvard Medical School told the panel. She said that losing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine even temporarily represented a big blow to efforts to stop the pandemic, especially in underserved communities.