At least 32 states have resumed the use of Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot COVID-19 vaccine, but Mississippi is not one of them.
“As of now, the Mississippi State Department of Health continues to pause Johnson and Johnson vaccine. The agency will review additional information and will advise the media and public if and when Mississippi resumes administration of the vaccine,” Liz Sharlot, director of communications at the Mississippi Department of Health, told Mississippi Today in a statement on Tuesday.
Less than 5% of Mississippians who have received a COVID-19 vaccine received Johnson & Johnson, so the pause has had little impact on the state’s overall vaccine supply-chain. Still, the effects of its absence will likely be more pronounced in rural areas, where the shot’s more lax storage requirements and singular dose requirement have helped ease logistical issues in vaccine distribution.
It is still unclear how the pause will affect Mississippi’s already high rate of vaccine hesitancy. The number of COVID-19 vaccines being administered in Mississippi has decreased 35% over the last two weeks, marking a growing rift between the state’s supply of vaccines and the population’s demand for them.
READ MORE: Mississippi vaccination rate craters as Johnson & Johnson pause continues
Federal health agencies ended their recommendation for a temporary pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Friday, and since then a majority of states have resumed its administration. The pause recommendation only lasted 10 days, and was changed after an extensive safety review by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
Acting out of an abundance of caution, federal health agencies issued the pause recommendation after six people were discovered to have developed a rare blood clot, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. A subsequent safety review found that 15 of the nearly 8 million people that have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the U.S. developed the rare blood clot.
A new warning will now be placed on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine label, and health care providers administering the shot have been instructed to inform patients of the associated risks.
Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting FDA commissioner said in a press release: “We have concluded that the known and potential benefits of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine outweigh its known and potential risks in individuals 18 years of age and older. We are confident that this vaccine continues to meet our standards for safety, effectiveness and quality. We recommend people with questions about which vaccine is right for them have those discussions with their health care provider.”
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.