Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, makes remarks during a press briefing with Press Secretary Jen Psaki at the White House in Washington, USA, April 13, 2021.
Tom Brenner | Reuters
White House Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that the break recommended by the Food and Drug Administration for the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine will give U.S. health authorities time to investigate in detail how which six women developed a rare coagulation disorder that left one dead.
Fauci said officials at the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want to see if there are “clues” and “find some common denominators among the women involved” that could allow the blood clotting disorder known as sinus venous cerebral thrombosis or CVST.
He also said that the recommended break will make doctors aware of this problem. Doctors usually treat that type of blood clot with heparin, a blood thinner, but Fauci said it could be dangerous in this case and mentioned that health officials recommended a different treatment.
“If someone comes up with this really rare enough thrombotic thrombocytopenia syndrome in which you have thrombosis, the most common way to treat this would be with heparin,” Fauci said during a White House news briefing. “It would be a mistake in this situation, because this could be dangerous and could aggravate the situation.”
Of the 120 million people in the U.S., about 6.9 million received the J&J vaccine, Fauci said, noting that there were no “red signals” from Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccines that are based on MRNA technology in the manufacture of their fires. Of the 6.9 million people who received J&J, 6 developed blood clots, he said.
“We are fully aware that this is a rare event. We want to resolve this as soon as we can and that is why you see the world breaking down, in other words, you want to stop for a while,” Fauci said. . “We want to leave it to the FDA and the CDC to investigate this carefully. I don’t think he pulled the trigger too fast. “
Fauci said the break could last from a matter of days to a few weeks. The CDC will also convene a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday to further review the cases.
During a previous conversation on Tuesday, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biological Evaluation and Research, said officials learned that blood clotting usually occurs about a week after vaccination, but not more than three weeks. after that, with an average time interval of 9 days.
“We know that for these vaccines, that in the first few days after vaccination, there are flu-like symptoms that may include headaches,” he said, adding that these are likely to be common side effects. “If someone came to an emergency room with very severe headaches or blood clots” doctors should ask if they have recently received a vaccine before developing a care plan. If the patient also has low platelets, doctors should consider that it may be related to the vaccine, he said.
He told reporters that the researchers had not yet found a specific cause for blood clotting in patients with the J&J vaccine, but thought it was similar to other viral adeno vector vaccines. “This is an immune response that occurs very, very rarely after some people receive the vaccine, and that immune response leads to extremely rare platelet activation and blood clots,” Marks said.