Monmouth County Reacts To Johnson & Johnson Pause

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — In Monmouth County, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was reserved for home-bound seniors and underserved communities, said a county spokeswoman. All of those vaccines are now being returned to the county's health department offices in Freehold.

This is in response to Tuesday morning's announcement by the FDA and CDC that they are investigating why six people, all women, developed blood clots and low platelet counts within two weeks of getting the J&J shot. The women were between the ages of 18 and 48, according to the New York Times. One woman died; a second woman remains hospitalized in critical condition.

Monmouth County primarily distributes the Moderna vaccine.

Currently, the Monmouth Health Dept. has about 775 unused Johnson & Johnson vaccines in stock and there are about 100 unused doses being returned from sites throughout the county. The county will wait for further instruction from the state about what to do with them, but other counties said they are not being instructed to throw the shots away. Instead, they should just be kept refrigerated.

Gov. Murphy said he thinks that pause will only be "a matter of days."

The Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey said Tuesday's announcement will not affect their vaccination efforts too significantly.

"We've really received a small allocation of J&J," said Chris Rinn, who runs the program. "So far, we've given out about 54,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, and about 800 doses of the Janssen vaccine."

J&J's vaccine was actually developed by its subsidiary Janssen Biotech, Inc. Johnson & Johnson is globally headquartered in New Brunswick.

"We have Moderna and J&J, and for now, the Johnson & Johnson shots are going to stay in our refrigerators labeled 'Do not use,'" said Rinn. "They will not be distributed until we hear from the state Department of Health."

He said anyone scheduled to get J&J this week will be offered Moderna instead.

All this spring, the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey (VNACJ) has been traveling throughout Monmouth County, giving the vaccine to teachers — in both public and private schools — and senior citizens, among others. It also partnered with Autism NJ to give the vaccine to those with developmental disabilities.

So far, the VNA has vaccinated about 4,000 teachers across 50 Monmouth County school districts said Rinn. Those districts included Matawan-Aberdeen, Holmdel, Hazlet and Middletown. The VNA is giving the shots to teachers from Bell Works; they are running a vaccination site in the ground-floor atrium. Teachers can drive there but for people who are home-bound, the VNA will bus them to Bell Works.

In Middletown, the VNA has vaccinated 1,400 residents, most of them seniors and about 250 were home-bound seniors.

"This really won't affect us too significantly," said Rinn. "We've given out 55,000 shots and only see a handful, less even, of side effects and none of those people had to be hospitalized."

He said the side effects included things such as nausea or light-headedness, but that could be attributed to a number of different things, such as people not eating before getting their shots.

Rinn urged the American public to continue to get vaccinated, despite the federally-mandated pause and investigation.

"It's really important that people know that vaccines provide great efficacy and great protection, and they do what's important: Prevent death, hospitalization and severe illness from COIVD," he said. "We all know someone who has been very sick from COVID and I know too many people who died from it."

About 235,000 Johnson & Johnson shots have already been administered in New Jersey, with none of these patients reporting any adverse effects, Murphy said. So far, 6.8 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines have been given out in total in the U.S.

Be the first to know what's happening in your town and area. Sign up to get Patch emails and don't miss a minute of local and state news: https://patch.com/subscribe Contact this Patch reporter: Carly.baldwin@patch.com