The risks of blood clots are much lower than the risks of COVID-19 illness, hospitalizations, and deaths.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement today « recommending a pause in the use » of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. The agencies took this step « out of an abundance of caution » based on six cases of a rare blood clot disorder in people who had been inoculated with the one-dose vaccine. There have been s ix cases out of 6.8 million people who have already been inoculated with the vaccine. The blood clot incidents all occurred in women between the ages of 18 and 48. Those odds amount to one in 1.13 million, which is comparable to your annual chances of being struck by lightning (1 in 1.22 million). For comparison, a November 2020 meta-analysis in The Lancet found that more than one in five COVID-19 patients experienced venous thromboembolism —that is, blood clots in their veins. In addition, the risk of blood clots from taking oral contraceptives is about 1 in 1,000 annually.
