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A decision on how to resume vaccination of Americans with The Johnson & Johnson coronavirus strike is likely to come by Friday, the top US infectious disease specialist said, a faster timetable than other health officials have indicated.
Anthony Fauci spoke while the US reached an important moment in vaccination: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on its website on Sunday that more than half of people in the U.S. over the age of 18 have now had at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine.
“I seriously doubt whether they will cancel” the J&J vaccine, one of three approved for use in the United States, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on a Sunday in four talk-show interviews.
It would be surprising “if we don’t have a replay in some form by Friday,” he added on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “One of these possibilities would be to bring them back, but to do so with a form of restriction or a form of warning.”
US health officials discontinued use of J&J Covid-19 photos while looking for more data on a rare side effect. Six women in the United States who received the vaccines developed a severe form of blood clotting six to 13 days after vaccination.
On Thursday, public health officials concluded a meeting with the vaccine without vote. CDC advisers said they did not have adequate information to make recommendations on how to respond to clot reports.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will resume on Friday, according to Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director.
“I think we won’t go beyond Friday to extend this break,” Fauci told ABC’s “This Week.”
On Thursday, however, the head of the CDC panel, who is expected to make a recommendation on whether to resume the J&J shootings, said more data was needed and that the break could take several weeks.
“If we make the wrong decision on this, it will have an impact on the credibility and credibility of the vaccine safety system,” Jose Romero told Bloomberg News in an interview. “So it’s very important that we do that.”
The CDC adviser sees the potential for a longer break on the J&J vaccine
Fauci told CBS that any new guidance on the vaccine “could be” based on gender, “but we don’t know that” yet. “You don’t want to jump in front of you and assume you know the full spectrum of this,” he said.
The six cases investigated were reported in women between the ages of 18 and 48, raising questions about whether the syndrome primarily affects women or young people in general.
“I think there will probably be some kind of warning or restriction or risk assessment,” Fauci told NBC.
Recall images
The South African health regulator called on its government on Saturday to do so take a break from Johnson & Johnson photos provided certain conditions are met.
Sepuci, a top adviser to President Joe Biden, said officials would determine “soon” – probably by the end of the summer – whether people who have been vaccinated against Covid may need to receive booster shots or new vaccines for strain emergencies.
Vaccine manufacturers Modern and Pfizer indicated that a a booster dose may be needed or for Covid vaccines to become annual events such as flu vaccines, but NBC’s Fauci said such an appeal would be a “public health decision.”
“It will not be a decision that will be made by a pharmaceutical company,” he said. “We are partners with them because they provide them. It will be an FDA-CDC decision. ”
On CNN, Fauci added that the US will be prepared for coronavirus variants “either by growing with the current vaccine or with a variant-specific vaccine.”
some 50.4% of people in the U.S. age 18 and older have had at least one dose of vaccine since the first photos were approved in December, the CDC said on its website on Sunday, and 32.5% of that age range are completely vaccinated.
Among the elderly, who have the highest risk of complications if they take Covid-19, 81% have received a first dose and almost 66% are fully vaccinated, the CDC said.
The United States should be able to vaccinate children “of virtually any age” by the first quarter of 2022, Fauci told CNN.
– With the assistance of Tony Czuczka and Yueqi Yang
(Important updates to the CDC vaccine in the second paragraph.)