Coronavirus

Health Officials Push Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Confidence

The CDC and FDA recommended lifting the pause and say they're confident about its safety.

Health Officials Push Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Confidence
Mark Lennihan / AP
SMS

Since the vaccine rollout started, we've been talking about public trust and confidence in the vaccines.

Now after the CDC and the FDA hit pause on the Johnson & Johnson shot, health officials are once again addressing how confident they are in the single-dose shot.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says the decision to pause and then resume the use of the vaccine proves that safety is the top priority and that people shouldn't hesitate to get it.

"And I think if you make the argument that we take safety really very seriously, and there was a pause, it was examined. And now we're going ahead with it," said Fauci. "So if anybody has any doubts about the safety of those other vaccines, including J&J, we can now say, you know, we take this very seriously. We've looked at it now. Let's get back and get people vaccinated."

When we talk about safety, remember the pause stemmed from six cases of rare blood clotting out of almost 7 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines given. 

The end of the pause means the U.S. has three approved COVID vaccines again.

Dr. Fauci says out of almost 140 million people who have gotten at least one shot in the U.S., just a fraction have gotten the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

There are now just over 8 million Johnson & Johnson shots compared to more than 100 million Moderna doses and 120 million Pfizer shots.