- Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the pause in the US rollout of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
- He said it allowed regulators to study effects and alert physicians to any symptoms.
- But he said that people who already got the shot should not worry.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the pause in the US rollout of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, but said that people who already got the shot should not worry.
In a video released by the White House on Tuesday, Fauci — the top infectious-diseases expert in the US — said that people who got the one-shot vaccine “should not be worried.”
The US paused the rollout of the vaccine on Tuesday, citing rare blood clots in six of the 6.8 million people who received it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said the pause was recommended “out of an abundance of caution.”
Fauci said the millions of people who had recieved it should not be concerned: “As I mentioned, this is a very rare event. One in more than a million individuals. The J&J vaccine has been shown in clinical trials to be highly efficacious. What we’re talking about now has nothing to do with the efficacy of the vaccine.”
Watch the video here:
But he defended the decision to pause the vaccine rollout, saying it would allow regulators to “investigate this a bit further” and also alert physicians to the symptoms so they know how to detect and treat any clotting cases they may find.
Fauci told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Tuesday that the decision to pause a treatment over a low number of adverse effects is “not at all unusual” in the medical community.
He said the decision to pause may ultimately increase confidence in vaccines, as people will see they are being looked at so closely: “Often when people are hesitant they say: I’m not really sure that this was really carefully looked at, is it really safe. I think what you see happen today was the fact that safety was put right up front.”
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