Hazleton clinic set to use Johnson & Johnson vaccine canceled
Apr. 15—A clinic in Hazleton to vaccinate people against COVID-19 has been canceled as part of a nationwide pause in use of vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson.
Hazleton Integration Project had planned to dispense the single-dose J&J vaccine at a clinic on Thursday and Friday.
But on Tuesday, federal agencies linked J&J vaccine to blood clots in rare cases and asked providers to hold off.
Six of the 6.8 million people who received the J&J vaccine as of April 12 developed cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a clot that blocks blood flow out of the brain, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Those agencies are reviewing and investigating cases of blood clots and called for the pause on the J&J vaccine out of an abundance of caution.
All who developed blood clots were women between ages 18 and 48.
The agencies told people to contact a doctor if they have any of the following symptoms within three weeks of receiving J&J vaccine: severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath.
When instructing doctors, the agencies recommended asking patients with those symptoms if they received J&J vaccine. Heparin, a drug commonly used to treat blood clots, might be dangerous when used on those patients, the agencies said.
In Hazleton, Community-Accessible Testing and Education, or CATE, planned the clinic at the community center. CATE is sponsored by Latino Connection, a marketing firm in Harrisburg, and has set up clinics to vaccinate and test people for COVID-19.
Hazleton Integration Project hopes to reschedule the clinic and will let the public know when new dates are set.
Lehigh Valley Health Network, which provides COVID-19 vaccinations at its hospital in Hazleton and other sites, hasn't received any J&J vaccine, Lehigh Valley spokesperson Lisa Marie Halecky said. Lehigh Valley has been dispensing vaccine made by Moderna and Pfizer, which produce vaccine differently than J&J.
Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines use messenger RNA, which instruct cells to make a protein that causes an immune response. Those companies are ready to increase production while J&J vaccine remains on the shelf.
Johnson & Johnson created an adenovirus vector vaccine with its Belgian subsidiary, Janssen Biotech. Those vaccines consist of coronavirus DNA inside the shell of an adenovirus, which cannot spread through bodies or make people sick, but does start an immune reaction.
An adenovirus vector vaccine made by AstraZeneca, which isn't approved in the United States, has been linked to blood clots in Europe, where some countries have stopped using it.
Blood clots can develop regardless of vaccine use. During trials of thousands of people done before J&J vaccine gained approval in the United States, 15 people who received the vaccine developed some types of clots, but so did 10 people given placebos, according to the FDA briefing on J&J/Janssen vaccine.
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