By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- The U.S. is to suspend the distribution of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ)'s Covid-19 vaccine due to fears of linkages to rare blood clotting problems, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
Officials at both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have subsequently confirmed that they have recommended the pause in the use of J&J's vaccine, due to "abundance of caution."
At 7:25 AM ET (1225 GM), J&J stock fell 2.8% premarket.
The news is a setback for the U.S.'s national vaccination campaign, which had factored the availability of J&J's drug into its ambitions to have the entire U.S. adult population eligible for vaccination already this month.
Over seven million shots of the J&J vaccine have been distributed so far in the U.S. According to the NYT, there have been six cases of people developing blood clots on the brain within two weeks of receiving the shot. All those affected have been women between the ages of 18 and 48, it noted.
This news follows similar issues with AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN)'s Covid-19 vaccine, which resulted in a number of countries in Europe as well as Canada and Australia pausing the use of the U.K.-Swedish drugmaker's shot. The medical authorities in the U.K. and Europe found a possible link to very rare cases of unusual blood clots with low blood platelets after studying the data, but decided that the overall benefit was still worth the risk.