By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) – A woman in Texas who received Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine has been hospitalized after showing symptoms similar to those of six people who recently suffered blood clots after taking the shot in the United States, a Texas health agency spokesman said on Thursday.
The incident comes as advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet on Friday to consider whether it is safe to resume injections of J&J’s COVID-19 vaccine and senior U.S. health officials prepare for a green light.
U.S. health agencies recommended pausing the use of the J&J single-shot vaccine last week because of rare cases of blood clots in six people out of the around 7 million people who have received the shot in the country.
A spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services said the CDC had notified the state agency about the incident on Wednesday and said it would not provide any additional information to protect the patient’s privacy.
“The patient is an adult female who was hospitalized after receiving the J&J vaccine with symptoms that appear to be consistent with the six cases reported elsewhere last week,” the spokesman said in an emailed statement.
The Austin American-Statesman newspaper, which first reported the incident, said federal authorities were probing the case.
“It’s important to remember that just because something is reported it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was caused by or linked to the vaccine,” Imelda Garcia, associate commissioner at the Texas health agency’s division for infectious diseases, was quoted as saying in the newspaper.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Tuesday that it found a possible link between J&J’s vaccine and rare blood clotting issues in adults who received doses in the United States, but it said that the benefits of the one-dose shot outweigh its risks.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa)
