U.S. health authorities were close to merely warning about a blood clotting risk from Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, but decided to recommend the use of an interruption because doctors would treat the condition improperly.
In the past four weeks, U.S. health officials have become concerned about similar blood clotting conditions in Europe involving a Covid-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca PLC, the people said. Officials dug into a U.S. vaccine safety database and identified the cases of major concern, but debated what steps to take.
Last Monday night, officials decided that urgent action was needed, the people said. Four out of six women in the U.S. who developed the blood clots days after vaccination initially received heparin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its use could aggravate the patients’ condition, the people said.
That evening, the country’s leading health officials agreed at a one-hour Zoom meeting to take the strongest step: recommending that the use of the vaccine be suspended in public while investigating the adverse cases, the people said .
Since the announcement, the Food and Drug Administration has studied other reports of additional blood clotting cases among people who received J & J’s vaccine, but has not confirmed whether any of them reflect the same phenomenon. Yet officials are more convinced, the people added, that the six total cases reported so far are related to the shot.