US FDA Recommends Pause On Johnson & Johnson's Single Dose Vaccine Following Blood Clot Cases

The United States Food and Drug Administration has recommended a pause over the use of Johnson and Johnson's single use Covid-19 vaccine over six patients developing a rare and severe type of blood clot after receiving the vaccine.

As per a series of tweets by the FDA, 68 lakh doses of the vaccine have been administered to patients, out of which a rare and severe type of blood clot has been reported among six of them.

The FDA states that these events appear to be extremely rare and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA are already reviewing the data involving the reported blood clots, which require a treatment method different from the one normally used to treat clots.

The CDC will convene a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) on Wednesday (14 April) to further review these cases and assess their potential significance. This will be reviewed by the FDA and the pause has been recommended out of an "abundance of caution" until the completion of this process.

Rare cases of blood clot were also reported in European nations after the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by pharmaceutical major AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

"This is a very rare side effect that was first thought to be a coincidence... now studies suggest a link to the vaccine. It is still very rare and not seen, so far, in India, although there are suggestions that one or two cases are here also", AIIMS Delhi Chief Randeep Gurela has said.