Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine Becomes Unavailable in US
One of the four COVID-19 vaccines authorised in the United States is no longer available, the nation’s public health agency says.
The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine “is no longer available in the U.S.,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in a recent update.
That’s due to the vaccine expiring on May 7. Healthcare workers were advised to dispose of any remaining doses in accordance with regulations.
U.S. regulators first cleared the jab in February 2021, giving Americans an alternative to the messenger RNA-based Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine became popular in part because it’s only a single dose. The messenger RNA vaccines each have a primary series of two doses.
But uptake slowed after U.S. authorities paused recommending the vaccine because of concerns about a reported link to a combination of blood clotting and low platelet levels, a condition called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) that can cause death. About 15 percent of the post-vaccination TTS cases have been fatal.
Regulators limited the availability of the vaccine in 2022 because experts determined it caused TTS.
