By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease doctor, hopes U.S. regulators will make a quick decision to lift a pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and get that vaccine “back on track,” he said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.
His comments come a day after a panel of advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) delayed a vote on whether to resume the J&J shots for at least a week, until it had more data on the risk.
The United States earlier this week decided to pause distribution of the J&J vaccine to investigate six cases of a rare brain blood clot linked with low platelet counts in the blood.
Fauci said the pause was “an indication that the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration take safety very seriously. I hope they make the conclusion of this quickly, and get back on track,” he said. “And I believe they will.”
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Mike Erman in Maplewood, New Jersey; editing by Peter Henderson and Rosalba O’Brien)
