Latino leaders fear pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccine might impact distribution and trust among Hispanics.
Pause feared to have impact on distribution and trust among Hispanics
Vaccination efforts against COVID-19 with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were halted on Tuesday following the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, a move that might have adverse effects among the Hispanic population, community leaders said.
The agencies are investigating clots detected in six women who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and recommended to stop vaccination with this brand, temporarily.
The news fell like a bucket of ice water to Father José Rodríguez, vicar of the Jesús de Nazareth Episcopal Church in Orlando who has led singledose vaccination events in recent weeks.
Rodríguez warned that the situation will have a domino effect in the fight against COVID19 for the Hispanic community not only by reducing supplies, but also adding fear that adds to the lack of confidence that already existed about the vaccines.
“I am devastated because that is going to cause resistance to get vaccinated,” Rodríguez said. “I am very concerned about the effect it can have and the community because it is difficult to convince them to get the vaccine and this is going to be more difficult now.”
This is already affecting a Johnson & Johnson dose distribution that was scheduled in Palm Bay this weekend, Rodríguez said.
In the last two months, around 5,000 people were vaccinated with doses of Johnson & Johnson at events held in three churches that are part of Episcopal Church to which Rodríguez belongs.
Another 1,000 people received vaccines made by Moderna or Pfizer, according to Rodríguez.
“This has been so difficult,” he lamented. “We finally got to see a little bit of light and this has become more difficult.”
In the long run, he fears that the memes, comments, rumors and false information that began to flood his cell phone on Tuesday morning, will usurp the months of campaigning to educate the Hispanic community on the importance of getting vaccinated.
Given the emotional effects that this may have on people who have received doses of the Johnson & Johnson vacine, and those who are undecided about vaccination against COVID-19, he urged that “they should not confuse this as something negative against vaccines.”
“Instead of seeing this with malice, you have to see this with gratitude. See this as an example of where the system is working. They [the CDC] are protecting us. They’re looking at [the side effects]. It wasn’t just dropping the vaccine and leaving it,” he said.
He urged the community to remain calm and wait for the results of the CDC and FDA investigation, but admitted that “it doesn’t matter what happens [with the investigation], the news is going to have an effect.”
‘I don’t want to create a collective panic’
To Isarett Jeffers, a community leader who works with farmworkers in Central Florida, the announcement represents the imminent loss of 3,000 singledose vaccines destined for immigrant farmworkers at a Colectivo Árbol’s event this weekend.
“Yes, it will affect us a lot because this was for all the farmers who you already know are traveling and who had to get to their country of origin or some other state and that was what we wanted to prevent,” Jeffers said.
Johnson & Johnson vaccines are favored by the Hispanic community, especially nomadic farmworkers who travel from state to state and back to Mexico to tend crops because it doesn’t require them to go back for a second dose, Jeffers explained.
At the moment, Jeffers estimates that she has distributed 400 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine through a partnership with Walgreens.
The group has not received reports of severe side effects in any of the vaccinated, she added.
“[Some] only suffered headaches the next day, but that was all,” she said.
Jeffers indicated that she is evaluating the next steps for the distribution of vaccines following medical guidelines, but stressed that “right now I don’t want to alarm the community. I do not want to cause a collective panic, because creating a collective panic of news that has to be analyzed and the experts have to say that it happened [is not responsible].”
Mexican Consulate cancels vaccine events
The Mexican Consulate in Orlando canceled several Johnson & Johnson vaccination events including one scheduled for Tuesday for Plant City farmworkers, after receiving a call from the Florida Department of Emergency Management alerting them to the Johnson & Johnson cases, according to Janice Febo, coordinator of the Health Window.
However, the agency continued vaccination events that were already scheduled with doses of Pfizer vaccines.
“We are vaccinating agricultural workers, most of whom are from Mexico,” said consul Juan Sabines in a live broadcast from the distribution site. “Today the Johnson & Johnson vaccination was canceled, but in order to not leave people unvaccinated, we are vaccinating them with Pfizer for the entire community.”
Febo, founder of Latin Community Advisors, the entity that manages the department in charge of vaccination at the Mexican Consulate, indicated that as of Monday afternoon they had distributed about 1,200 doses of Johnson & Johnson at community events.
She also highlighted that her “coworkers, almost all of them, are vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson.”
She admitted that cancellations of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines could delay vaccination efforts, but Febo was optimistic about the confidence of the Hispanic community.
“We thought they could be in that doubt, but no. The reality is that the majority of the community wants to get vaccinated for this COVID-19 and I think we have to take it one step at a time in the next few days to see what the CDC says,” she said.