How resuming the Johnson & Johnson vaccine use will affect Missouri vaccination efforts
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
U.S heath officials gave approval to resume the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Friday night.
Just before 4 p.m. on Friday, a U.S. health panel gave the green light on resuming the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The panel convened after reports of six women developing a potentially fatal blood clot after getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the vaccine's benefits outweigh the risks of the rare blood clots. The advisers said the vaccine would help more people than it would hurt.
The Missouri Department of Health and Human Services says Johnson & Johnson vaccinations can resume immediately and allocations from the federal government will resume next week. According to the department a little over 105,000 doses of J&J have been given out in Missouri before the pause.
Almost 8 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have been given out in the U.S. to date.
The Columbia Boone County Health Department said they currently have 200 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in storge.
"We actually at the health department have not given out any Johnson and Johnson because it was hard to get at first," Sara Humm, said. "Then we actually did get 200 doses just right before the pause, so we haven't given any out, we still have the supply that we have received."
Anthony DeSha, owner of Flow's Pharmacy said the pause on the Johnson & Johnson happened before they could give any of their doses out.
"We were gonna give them last Friday and then the decision came down before we started giving them," DeSha said. "It really hasn't affected us other than calling people who were scheduled to get it just to let them know that was on hold for now."
DeSha said the pharmacy currently has 300 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. He said if the vaccine use is resumed, they would go ahead and give it out to people.
"As long as they give us the okay, we will go ahead and do it, I just have to see exactly what they say," DeSha said.
In the past week, DeSha said he's started to see a decrease in demand for the vaccine and the pharmacy isn't filling all of their vaccine appointments. Lending to the fact, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may not be needed to keep up with demand in the Boone County area.
MU Health Care has also seen a decrease in demand for the vaccine recently.
"The change in pause [of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine] is affecting MU Health Care," Executive Director of Pharmacy & Lab at MU Health Care, Brad Myers said. "If you actually look at the state of Missouri as a whole our allegation of J&J was a pretty small percentage of the overall vaccine within our state."
MU Health Care recently held a vaccination event at Faurot Field from April 15-17 with 7,000 vaccine doses. It ended up having 1,600 Pfizer doses leftover which will be used for an additional event on May 1. Sign-ups for the event are currently open.
In total, MU Health Care has given out around 67,000 coronavirus vaccines to their staff and community.
Senior Vice President at Missouri Hospital Association, Mary Becker said pausing the J&J vaccine should make more people feel certain about the medicine.
"It should make us all feel confident that they are really taking side effects and safety very seriously," Becker said.
The advisory panel uncovered 15 cases of a rare blood clot in connection with the vaccine and three of them were fatal. All of the cases involved women who were almost all under the age of 50.
The symptoms for the rare blood clot include headaches, fever, chills, abdominal pain, nausea, and malaise. These symptoms are often common for all people who receive the vaccine as well. One side effect which indicated a blood clot was a headache that showed up six to ten days after vaccination.
The vaccine recommendation will go to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky for final approval.
According to the state dashboard, Boone County is currently the highest vaccinated jurisdiction in the state with exactly 43% of residents receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. Just over 33% of Cole County residents have received one dose of the vaccine.
Pulaski County currently ranks last out of all the Missouri jurisdictions with just over 10% of its population receiving at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
