Westport holds off on Johnson & Johnson clinic
WESTPORT — The Westport Weston Health District spent Tuesday shifting gears to offer Moderna in place of Johnson & Johnson, following news that the U.S. would pause using Johnson & Johnson while a possible link to blood clots is investigated.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called for an immediate pause on the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine after six women developed rare but severe blood clots out of 6.8 million people who have received it.
The district, which serves Westport, Weston and Easton, was supposed to host a smaller Johnson & Johnson clinic on Wednesday with fewer than 100 people scheduled, said Mark Cooper, the district’s director.
He said some of the people they contacted decided to not get the Moderna vaccine, but said so many people are still looking for appointments that it wasn’t hard to fill the slots.
The district has already given about 110 Johnson & Johnson vaccines, a fraction of their overall vaccinations considering the more than 4,000 doses of Moderna they’ve administered.
“We’ve been using J&J mostly for the homebound program,” Cooper said, adding that started a couple of weeks or so ago.
He said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine makes sense for those situations because it only requires one shot. This group will also switch to Moderna in the meantime.
The list of homebound residents comes from the three towns, as well as the state who also keeps track of this demographic, Cooper said.
“The list is always changing,” he said.
So far, he said they haven’t heard of any complications, just the usual sore arm.
He said he’s not sure if the district will have enough Moderna vaccines to offset the stall because they had recently started shifting to ordering more Johnson & Johnson after reassurances from the state that there would be an “abundance” of Johnson and Johnson this week.
“We were cutting back on our orders of Moderna,” he said.
He said they’re going to use Moderna as long as needed and said the Johnson & Johnson pause might be short as officials investigate why the blood clots could have happened.
“We’ll all have to wait and see,” Cooper said.
The federal agencies’ research could determine if there was a link between the six cases and determine if there’s a specific risk factored for that particular vaccine.
“The FDA is recommending that anyone who has had the J&J vaccine and experiences a severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination should contact their healthcare provider,” said Sofia Pendley, an assistant clinical professor at Sacred Heart University. “If you’ve received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and do not have any of these symptoms within the three weeks of your vaccine, it is unlikely that you will have an adverse reaction.”
Most colleges in Connecticut had been planning vaccinating their students with Johnson & Johnson before they left campus, but are now looking at other options due to this and a delay in the federal supply.
“We have been working with the state with the hope of receiving vaccines for our students before they leave campus,” said Kimberly Swartz, a SHU spokesperson. “However, knowing that there was no guarantee that would happen and aware that there were already issues with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after the botched batch in Baltimore, we have been encouraging our students to find ways to get vaccinated ever since they became eligible on April 4 and have continued to work with Hartford HealthCare who is partnering with us on our mega vaccination site.”
Cooper encouraged people to still get vaccinated.
“We’re trying to stay ahead of the variants and the only way to do that is to get vaccinated,” he said.
Jacqueline Vernarelli, an assistant professor at Sacred Heart agreed.
“It’s important to know that this is very rare, and people should not panic, or cancel future vaccination appointments while we wait for more information,” she said.