Written by: Stefan J. Bos
Article source: www.worthynews.com

The United States, South Africa, and European Union have “temporarily” halted the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 jab amid mounting global concerns about coronavirus vaccinations.

Tuesday’s decision came after what officials called “rare reports” of blood clotting. Six cases were detected in more than 6.8 million doses of the vaccine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said.

Johnson & Johnson paused its EU rollout, which started this week, after similar reports elsewhere.

It follows blood clotting incidents linked to one or more deaths following inoculations with doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, prompting interruptions in its roll-out.

The FDA said it was recommending the temporary pause “out of an abundance of caution.” It confirmed that one patient died from blood clotting complications, and another is in a critical condition.

Side effects have also been reported when using other vaccines such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID-19 jabs. Both use the same technique involving Messenger RNA (mRNA) injected into the body.

In at least some cases, people died after receiving an mRNA jab. Health authorities in Norway, for instance, confirmed in January that 23 people died within days of receiving their first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.

At least thirteen of the 23 deaths, all nursing home patients, were a direct result of side effects from the shot, officials suggested. “The reports suggest that common adverse reactions to mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients,” warned Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician at the Norwegian Medicines Agency (NMA).

Critics are not surprised. The traditional method of creating vaccines – introducing a weakened or dead virus, or a piece of one, to stimulate the body’s immune system – takes over a decade on average. One pandemic flu vaccine took over eight years to develop, while a hepatitis B vaccine was nearly 18 years in the making.

Doctors in favor of vaccines counter that serious side effects are relatively rare among the hundreds of millions of Coronavirus jabs already administered globally.

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Date published: 14/04/2021
Feature image: Image for illustrative purposes only. unsplash.com

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