A few days after federal health authorities recommended that providers pause on administering the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine while a potential link to rare blood clots is investigated, local officials say it’s hard to pinpoint a date as to when the one-dose vaccine may become available again.
Mayor Toby Barker recently sat down with Dr. Bryan Batson, CEO of Hattiesburg Clinic, to discuss the matter. Batson said the Centers for Disease Control and the Mississippi State Department of Health have given officials instructions to hold on to their vaccination supplies until the go-ahead is given.
“(We don’t have) clear indication yet at this point on how long this pause could last,” he said. “In the notification that we received, it was made clear that this was a pause to learn more about a possible connection between J&J and this medical condition.
“This is a blood clot that can occur in one of the veins in the brain that helps drain blood. But more importantly, it’s also a potential pattern between this blood clot and another thing that they have found in a very small number of patients, where patients have also been found to have a low platelet count. That connection is what really raised a flag (where) some additional information needed to be determined.”
The order to pause the vaccine was given on April 13, after six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed blood clots after receiving the vaccine. At that point, 6.8 million individuals had received the Johnson & Johnson shot.
Batson said the blood clot issue that is being investigated also occurs in the general population of individuals who have not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19.
“That’s certainly not to dismiss any of this at all, but the general incidents of this blood clot is about two to five patients per million,” he said. “But again, there’s this connection, potentially, that is being investigated between the blood clot and the low platelet count.
“With the six cases that were identified, all six cases occurred within 13 days of receiving the vaccine.”
As of April 15, approximately 4,200 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been given in Mississippi. Batson said of those, any individual who has received the vaccine at least a month ago should have no concern of the blood clot issue arising.
However, patients who are in the first two weeks of receiving the dose could keep an eye out for symptoms such as severe headaches, abdominal or leg pain, and/or shortness of breath.
Officials from the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have not found any connections between the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines and the blood clot or low platelet issues.
“Our numbers have been very similar to the country and the rest of the world, where (severe reactions to the vaccines) are extremely rare,” Batson said. “We’ve vaccinated over 28,000 at this point, and have had essentially zero patients who have had a significant reaction that would require hospitalization or anything of the sort.
“(We have had) some patients who have had a little bit of an anxiety reaction to the vaccine, or those expected side effects where we’ve had headaches, body aches, fatigue.”
As of April 15, there were 10 COVID-positive patients hospitalized in the Hattiesburg area healthcare system, slightly lower than the average of 10.07 over the past 14 days. Zero hospitalized patients were under investigation for the virus.
“I will say that Merit Health Wesley did not have any COVID patients (on April 15), so that’s a positive sign,” Barker said. “We are getting to about the week or two out from Easter, so we’ll see how that affects us.”
As of the same date, three patients in the ICU were confirmed positive for COVID-19. No ICU patients were under investigation for the virus.
Four hundred and ten new cases were reported statewide, with six new deaths. There was one new death on April 13 in Forrest County and another on April 11 in Lamar County, for a total of 147 total deaths from the virus in Forrest County and 84 in Lamar County.
On April 15, Forrest County reported eight new positive cases and Lamar County reported 13, for a total of 21 new cases in the metro area. Forrest County has seen a total of 7,537 cases and Lamar County has seen 6,132, for a total of 13,669 in the metro area.
Seventeen percent of Forrest County residents – or 12,756 individuals – have been fully vaccinated against the virus, with 4,580 having received their first dose. In Lamar County, 16,660 residents, or 26 percent, have been fully vaccinated, with 5,010 having received their first dose.
