The administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is blocked in the United States

The United States has suspended the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against Covid-19 from today. There Food and Drug Administration e i Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in fact, they suggested a pause in vaccination with Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose serum in order to be able to carefully examine some recent cases of blood clots.

In a note released at this time, the agencies announced that the CDC will convene a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday to examine six cases of “a rare and serious type of blood clot” in people who have received the vaccine. .

The FDA will then review that analysis while also investigating the cases found.

“Until the screening process is complete, we recommend a precautionary pause in the use of this vaccine,” said Dr Anne Schuchat, Deputy Chief Director of the CDC, and Dr Peter Marks, Director of the Center for FDA Biologics Evaluation and Research.

To date, over 6.8 million doses of the single-dose J&J vaccine have already been administered across the country. It will now be necessary to evaluate how the decision will affect the current plans for the supply and distribution of vaccines also in Europe and, especially in Italy, where the first 184 thousand doses of the 400-500 thousand expected to be delivered by the end of April are expected today. .

Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which exploit a molecule of messenger Rna, the J&J vaccine is a viral vector drug (adenovirus), like the one developed by AstraZeneca: a DNA fragment corresponding to the spike protein is inserted into a virus that is harmless to man is suitably modified. The virus infects human cells and the DNA is then read and transformed into protein. The latter is the antigen against which the immune response grows.
Therefore, we are witnessing the analysis of a series very similar to the one that has already had the AstraZeneca vaccine as protagonist in recent weeks.

In recent days, even the Prac, the Safety Committee of the European Medicines Agency (Ema), had initiated a review to evaluate reports of severe cases of unusual blood clots with low platelets, in people who had received Janssen’s Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. At the moment, it is not clear whether there is a causal association between vaccination with Janssen and these conditions, but, as explained by the European Agency, “the PRAC is investigating these cases and will decide whether regulatory action may be necessary, which usually consists of an update of the product information ‘. But new decisions could now also depend on the verdict that will come from the US supervisory bodies.