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Following the advice of federal health officials, Virginia has resumed the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, but so far the shots aren’t easy to find in Hampton Roads.
A search for doses by the drugmaker using the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s map tool turned up few sites stocked with the vaccine. Just 10 were within a 50-mile radius of downtown Norfolk on Monday, and the situation was similar on the Peninsula.
A handful of Rite Aid, Walmart and Kroger locations indicated they were administering J&J shots in the area, according to VaccineFinder.org. But no mass vaccination clinics, run by either public agencies or hospital systems, appeared to have appointments available for it early this week.
It’s unclear whether the slow start is a short-term consequence of the J&J hiatus while administrators ramp up again, or a matter of dwindling supplies from the manufacturer.
Only 53 people were given J&J shots over the weekend and Monday throughout the state, according to data reported to the Virginia Department of Health as of Tuesday.
Many critics of the CDC and Food and Drug Administration’s decision to suspend use of the J&J vaccine have feared that interest in the single-dose shot would plummet in the aftermath, regardless of whether it was deemed safe to continue using across all age and demographic groups.
Virginia public health officials estimate about 150,000 J&J doses are on hand statewide from previous shipments.
The federal government lifted the recommended “pause” on J&J’s vaccine late Friday after an 11-day review of vaccine safety data and adverse cases. Officials determined the benefits of the shot outweighed the risks of extremely rare but potentially life-threatening blood clots.
Shortly after the announcement, Dr. Danny Avula, state vaccine coordinator, released a statement Friday night saying Virginia vaccinators were “free to resume administering” the vaccine as early as Saturday.
“This extra scrutiny should instill confidence in the system that is in place to guarantee COVID-19 vaccine safety,” he said. “As with any vaccine, we encourage individuals to educate themselves on any potential side effects and to weigh that against the possibility of hospitalization or death from COVID-19.”
Fifteen vaccine recipients who developed a highly unusual kind of blood clot, out of nearly 8 million people given the J&J shot, were a part of the federal safety review. All were women, most under age 50. Three died, including a 45-year-old woman in Virginia, and seven remain hospitalized.
But ultimately federal health officials decided the unusual clot risk could be handled with warnings to help younger women decide whether they should use that shot or an alternative.
Some believe the temporary halt will have a long-lasting, detrimental effect on vaccine confidence. Fewer than one in four unvaccinated Americans say they would be willing to get a J&J shot now, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. People seemed to have higher levels of confidence in the other two vaccines used in the United States.
The J&J vaccine, sometimes referred to as the one-and-done shot, has been considered a critical tool in upending the pandemic around the world because it requires only one injection, rather than two. The drug can be shipped and stored at standard fridge temperatures, and the company has pledged to sell the vaccine without a profit during the public health crisis.
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Melissa Gordon, a spokeswoman for the state health department, said the agency does not have numbers for which local health departments and pharmacies are currently holding J&J supplies.
No new batches of the drug maker’s vaccines arrived this week. Public health officials expect to find out Tuesday how many doses Virginia will get for next week.
The number could be relatively small. The manufacturer is playing catch-up on production because of a mixing problem this month that resulted in 15 million doses being deemed unusable.
Before halting the use of J&J vaccines, about 184,400 Virginians — or 10% of the state’s vaccinated population then — had been inoculated with the brand.
Moderna and Pfizer, the other two authorized vaccines, make up the vast share of COVID-19 shots administered in Virginia and the United States, and they were not affected by the suspension. CDC officials say there’s no evidence of the rare stroke-like syndrome occurring with the other shots.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Elisha Sauers, 757-839-4754, elisha.sauers@pilotonline.com