The Oregon Health Authority has asked all of the state’s vaccine providers to immediately stop administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
This follows earlier announcements Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food & Drug Administration.
The OHA says this is out of an abundance of caution, as they review 6 cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Paul Cieslak, OHA senior health advisor and medical director, said the side effects were found in six people out of about seven million nationwide who’ve received the J & J vaccine.
“We still don’t know if the vaccine was causally related to these side effects," Cieslak said to reporters during a virtual press conference Tuesday. "The reason for the pause is that the federal agencies that are involved with vaccination, CDC and FDA, are going to look at the issue and try to ascertain whether they can determine a causal affect from the vaccine and we’ll go from there.”
Cieslak said none of the cases of blood clots were reported in Oregon where 85,000 doses of J & J vaccine have been administered. He said there are about 212,000 doses of J&J vaccine in storage now in Oregon.
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