(CN) — In the aftermath of the United States’ plan to pause distribution of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, questions about how the news will affect vaccine hesitancy have swirled around communities, in the media and across the internet.
The concern is that hitting pause on the J&J vaccine could dissuade people from getting vaccinated, particularly those already unsure about getting a shot.
Federal officials seek to reframe that notion. Rather than signaling danger, they say, this week’s decision should reassure the public. It means regulators caught potential issues early, after just six people experienced severe blood clotting issues after getting the J&J shot.
Roughly 6.8 million doses of the J&J vaccine have been given out in the U.S. since the shot was authorized for emergency use in February. The rare blood clot cases were all in women, between the ages of 18 and 48, and symptoms showed up 6 to 13 days after vaccination.
“What you’ve seen just over the last few days is a really concerted effort, not only to do the safety investigation, but to communicate openly and transparently with people about what’s going on,” said Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, during a press briefing on Friday.
The pause, officials said, serves three purposes: It alerts health care providers to be on the lookout for rare blood clotting events, gives time for potential additional cases to be reported and allows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's committee of experts to review the vaccine’s safety.
A go-to treatment for blood clotting issues, a drug called heparin cannot be used to treat the clots that have shown up after J&J vaccination, another reason officials need time to communicate best practices to health care personnel.
“This is your safety system working for you,” Murthy said.
The pause, though, presents an opportunity to fuel the message of people already opposed to Covid-19 vaccination.
“I think the opponents of the vaccine are going to take advantage of it, and probably already have,” said Sharona Hoffman, a professor of health law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in a phone interview.
Hoffman said she doubts that people who were already planning on getting vaccinated will be deterred.
“That seems pretty unlikely,” she said, since J&J isn’t being offered for the time being, and Pfizer and Moderna vaccines remain available.
Before the pause, J&J, the most recently approved of the three vaccines, made up less than 5% of shots given out in the U.S. Officials say that while transitioning away from J&J could cause some delays in the short-term, supply won’t be an issue.
Hoffman agreed with the notion that people should gain confidence in the vaccine approval process following this week’s news.
She said that the amount of media attention the pause has gotten, and how it’s portrayed, may exacerbate vaccine hesitancy, however, “and that’s problematic.”
Vaccination, combined with the natural immunity of people who have recovered from the coronavirus, will ultimately end the Covid-19 pandemic, experts say.
“If we want to get back to normal life, vaccines are the pathway” to ending the pandemic, Hoffman said. “We’re really not going to get over it unless we achieve herd immunity.”
The continued spread of the virus creates opportunities for the virus to mutate, creating new variants — including, possibly, those that are resistant to vaccines. The Biden administration on Friday recently put $1.7 billion toward studies of viral genomes, to help detect virus variants before they emerge and spread through populations.
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