Fairgrounds Vacc Site Discontinues Johnson-Johnson Vaccine TFN
Officials overseeing the Benton Fairgrounds Vaccination site announced early Tuesday morning they will discontinue offering the Johnson-Johnson Vaccine until further notice.
Ben Shearer, the Public Information Officer for the site, issued a statement that read in part:
"Per the CDC guidelines just issued this morning, the Mass Vaccination site at the Benton County, WA Fairgrounds will NOT be administering Johnson and Johnson vaccine, until further notice. If you have an appointment this week for the Johnson and Johnson, you should be getting an email from PREPMOD. Please reschedule your appointment on PREPMOD."
The CDC, says Shearer, will be issuing a press release with more information sometime later Tuesday.
This comes in the wake of the CDC and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) announcing that recently six women who have received the Johnson and Johnson Vaccine have developed a rare but severe blot clot ailment. These clots appeared within two weeks after receiving the first dose of the vaccine.
The women, says the CDC and FDA, are between the ages of 18 and 41, and reports say one of the women died.
FDA and CDC officials stress this pause in the use of the J-J vaccine is out of an abundance of caution. According to Federal officials, approximately 6.8 million Americans have received this vaccine, another 9 million more units have been shipped to various vaccination sites and medical facilities around the U.S.
Shearer and other officials did not say what kind of 'slowdown' or setback this will result in by the vaccine being sidelined.
According to information from the WSDOH, 149,000 doses of the J-J vaccine have been administered so far in Washington State. As of this writing, we did not yet have Mid-Columbia or Benton Franklin County numbers yet.
Federal officials emphasize this is six persons out of millions of vaccines that have been given.