Illinois public health officials have notified providers to discontinue use the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine after the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for a pause on the use of the immunization following reports of rare blood clots.
“IDPH has notified all Illinois COVID-19 providers throughout the state to discontinue use of the J&J vaccine at this time,” the Illinois Department of Public Health said in a statement. “In order to keep appointments, IDPH is strongly advising providers to use Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.”
IDPH said anyone who got the J&J shot who develops severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination should contact their health care provider.
Illinois was allocated 17,000 doses of the J&J COVID-19 vaccine, officials said, making up a small fraction of the total vaccine allotment for the state. Next week, IDPH said it’s set to get nearly half a million vaccine doses, of that just 5,800 were expected to be from J&J.
“In Illinois, of the total 7.3 million doses administered to date, 4% or approximately 290,000 have been J&J,” the department later said.
And, despite COVID-19 vaccines continuing to increase, Illinois public health officials continue to report a higher COVID-19 positivity rate.
For Tuesday’s daily COVID-19 news release, the state said more than 23% of the state’s population has been fully vaccinated. The seven-day statewide positivity rate for cases as a percent of total tests conducted is 4.3%. A week ago, the rate was 3.9%.
This article was originally posted on Illinois suspends J&J COVID-19 vaccine
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