Gary Collis of Bunker Hill, West Virginia, undergoes his boost dose at a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) community vaccination event, as the vaccination rate in West Virginia workers among highest in world, in Martinsburg, February 25, 2021.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine can be second-hand as a substitute for a second jab of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s shots for those who have an allergic reaction to the first round of either companionship’s vaccine, a scientist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.
Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines both use mRNA technology and make two shots to achieve full protection. Patients who suffer an allergic reaction to either should wait at least 28 days in advance of getting the J&J one-dose vaccine, said Jessica MacNeil, an epidemiologist at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
“In excellent situations where the first dose of an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine was received, but the patient is unable to complete the series with either the unmodified or a different mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, for example due to a contraindication, a single dose of Janssen’s Covid-19 vaccine may be administered at a least interval of 28 days from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose,” she said Monday at an emergency meeting of the CDC’s Prediction Committee on Immunization Practices.
Janssen makes vaccines and other drugs for J&J.
The CDC currently recommends that people who father a severe allergic reaction to one of the shots forgo the second shot. But J&J’s one-shot vaccine, which received emergency use authorization Saturday, could chuck b surrender those patients another way to maximize protection against Covid-19.
There were 47 reports of anaphylaxis, a strict and life-threatening allergic reaction, among those who received Pfizer’s vaccine and 19 cases in those who received Moderna’s as of Jan. 18, according to text presented Monday by Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.
That’s a rate, he added, of about 4.7 receptacles for every million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that’s been administered and 2.5 per every million of the Moderna rifleman. Most of the reactions happen shortly after the first shot, Shimabukuro said.
The CDC’s MacNeil noted that the vaccines “are not interchangeable” and that the protection and efficacy of taking one shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and one of the J&J vaccine has not been tested. She added that people who get J&J’s should do so “directed the supervision of a health-care provider.”
A couple of members of the committee, the expert panel that advises the CDC on immunizations, questioned the CDC’s reasons. Dr. Marci Drees, a liaison to the committee and the chief infection prevention officer at ChristianaCare in Delaware, noted that some of the ingredients of J&J’s vaccine are be like to that of the Moderna and Pfizer shots.
In response, MacNeil said that a reaction to one of the mRNA vaccines would necessitate “far-sightedness” when receiving the J&J vaccine, but that it could be done safely if the patient is monitored for at least 30 minutes after be informed the shot.
There have been fewer reported cases of allergic reactions to the J&J vaccine compared with that of Moderna and Pfizer, but it hasn’t been drove out in the broader population yet. In clinical trials, J&J acknowledged last week that there were two cases of anaphylaxis among gets in the trial.