California pauses Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine following feds’ recommendation

California swiftly followed U.S. health officials’ recommendation Tuesday to pause administering the single-dose COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson as federal officials investigate a handful of reports of severe blood clots in recipients.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and the California Department of Public Health said the state had directed providers to “pause the use” of the J&J vaccine.

CDPH says California was “convening the Western States Scientific Safety Review Group” — the states’ panel of scientific experts who independently review the vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. — to “review the information provided by the federal government.”

California was slated this week to receive only 67,600 J&J doses due to a supply issue — down substantially from the 572,700 allocated for last week, according to CDC data. The state is scheduled to get close to 1.9 million total first and second doses of Pfizer and Moderna.

“It will not materially impact our ability to fulfill our expectations and commitment to provide enough vaccine to fully vaccinate all those that seek to get vaccinated,” Newsom said Tuesday.

CDPH, in a written statement from state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan, said the J&J vaccine represented “less than 4%” of California’s allocated supply for this week.

Newsom announced last week that California plans to reopen its economy, dropping nearly all COVID-19 restrictions aside from the mask mandate, on June 15 — provided that hospitalization rates are low enough and vaccine supply flow high enough to do so.

The governor’s statement Tuesday morning maintains that California remains “set to fully reopen on June 15.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a joint statement early Tuesday said they are investigating six U.S. cases “of a rare & severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the vaccine.”

More than 6.8 million shots of the J&J vaccine have been administered to date, according to the CDC.

“Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare,” the FDA wrote, but the agencies are “recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution.”

The CDC will hold an advisory meeting Wednesday to review the cases that are being investigated, and the FDA will review the CDC’s assessment.

It is unclear how long the pause may last. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was cleared for emergency use at the end of February.

Sacramento County’s Cal Expo drive-thru site had previously been slated to give J&J shots Tuesday and Wednesday, but had to cancel 800 total appointments that had been set for those two days, according to a county news release.

“We have notified those scheduled and provided a link to the Sacramento County Vaccine webpage for scheduling at a vaccination site with Moderna or Pfizer,” the county said in an update early Tuesday afternoon.

Other community partnership vaccine sites swapped out J&J for Pfizer or Moderna. Luther Burbank High School on Tuesday as well as Liberty Towers and St. Paul Baptist Church on Wednesday had planned to use J&J shots. The St. Paul clinic was also set to give Moderna vaccines, according to the county website.

The clinic at Burbank High planned to administer 4,000 J&J doses in one of Sacramento’s hardest-hit ZIP codes. It proceeded Tuesday using a smaller number of two-dose vaccines.

“We have switched all appointments to use the Pfizer vaccine,” reads an update posted to the clinic’s appointment registration website. “As a result, we have limited supply and may not be able accept walk-ins at this time.”

The Liberty Towers clinic was also changed to Pfizer, and the St. Paul Clinic moved to Moderna-only.

The county last week was allocated only 1,700 doses of the J&J vaccine, down from about 12,000 the previous week, due in large part to reported manufacturing issues that were impacting nationwide supply prior to Tuesday’s recommended pause. Last week’s allocations included 11,700 doses of Pfizer and 6,800 of Moderna, both of which are two-dose vaccines.

Neighboring Placer and El Dorado counties do not have any J&J clinics scheduled for this week, according to their health department websites. Yolo County in a statement said it is replacing all J&J clinics this week with Pfizer and Moderna, and that it does not expect the pause to “greatly impact the county’s current vaccine timeline.”

CDPH data updated Monday showed showed California providers had administered about 900,000 cumulative doses of J&J through Sunday, including close to 24,000 in Sacramento County.

State health data does not include a breakdown of inventory, but the CDC reported Monday that close to 2.1 million J&J doses had been shipped to California, meaning there could be close to 1.2 million doses on hand statewide that may be paused, depending on how many doses went out Monday.

The recommended pause comes as California on Thursday will open eligibility for COVID-19 vaccination to all ages 16 and older. Newsom’s office said in Tuesday’s statement that this expansion will continue as planned.

More than 15 million Californians — just under half the state’s adult population — have had at least one dose of a vaccine, according to CDPH data updated Monday.

Tuesday’s announcement marks the first federally recommended pause for any of the three COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorized for emergency use in the U.S.

Another large-scale COVID-19 vaccine pause in California came in January, when CDPH recommended a halt in administering doses from a single batch of about 330,000 Moderna shots due to reports surfacing of several possibly severe allergic reactions. That pause lasted less than three days.

The Bee’s Lara Korte contributed to this story.