BUFFALO, N.Y. — While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention weighs its options after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was put on pause, questions about the blood clot situation continue to rise.
2 On Your Side spoke to Dr. Elad Levy, Chairman of Neurosurgery at the University at Buffalo to get a better understanding of the blood clots at the center of the vaccine pause.
2OYS: What are the clots that have been associated with Johnson and Johnson's vaccine? How rare are these clots, and are there symptoms associated with them?
Dr. Levy: Supposedly, these clots are associated with the veins that drain the brain. So clots can occur in our blood vessels, the arteries, and the veins. There's a concern that these are occurring in the veins of the brain. What are the symptoms? They can include progressive headache, and if left untreated, can progress to cause a stroke, and then a bleed, and sometimes these bleeds can be fatal.
2OYS: Now, it's also important for us to be clear that there is no definitive proof right now that the J&J vaccine is the cause of these clots very few of them. That's what investigators are looking at. If it is determined the vaccine is not the cause of these issues, what are the possible reasons for these clots that are being reported?
Dr. Levy: You made an excellent point, we don't know if the vaccine is causing these clots. And as I said, every year for the last decade, I've treated a handful of patients with these clots before we even had this vaccine. So this pause is important. There's a question, is there an association? And now scientifically, we have to answer that question. And that's the reason for the pause. Until we have that answer, exactly. As you said, we shouldn't jump to any conclusion.
2OYS: Is this now an example of science doing what it's designed to do, checks and balances?
Dr. Levy: Science is doing what science needs to do. There may be an association, it may just be the fact that these six people got clots. So they're going to try to answer that question. They placed a pause because the first thing is, do no harm. The last thing we want to do is offer a treatment that may or may be harmful.