The nationwide pause on administering the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine has some Massachusetts medical experts concerned about a rise in vaccine hesitancy.
“My biggest concern at this point is not that the vaccine is not safe … it’s the potential damage that could be done to public trust,” Dr. Benjamin Linas of Boston University told state lawmakers during a hearing Tuesday on the spread of COVID-19 variants.
Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases physician and Boston University associate professor, said that while the pause on J&J is the right thing to do, it “will fuel some of the vaccine hesitancy, you might see that group grow.”
But she said that hesitancy might be reduced by “moving vaccines closer to patients” so they can more readily talk to their providers about their concerns.
Dr. Dan Barouch of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said the pause shows a “commitment to safety” as federal agencies investigate the cases of potentially rare blood clotting in six J&J recipients.
But he said “if one of the three vaccines is either not used, or has to be restricted for use, then it will necessarily slow down the vaccine process” at a time when Massachusetts and the nation are locked in a race to vaccinate against variants.
So-called “variants of concern” now account for more than half the coronavirus cases being sequenced at the Broad Institute, with a large proportion of those being the B.1.1.7 strain first discovered in the United Kingdom. The P.1 variant first identified in Brazil is also circulating in the community here.
But right now only 1.4% of confirmed cases in Massachusetts are undergoing sequencing, when about 5% is needed to “be able to identify variants of concern with confidence” and to “identify emerging threats,” said Dr. Bronwyn MacInnis of the Broad.
Dr. Paul Biddinger, the director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Disaster Medicine and head of Gov. Charlie Baker’s vaccine advisory group, called for more partnership between the state lab, academic institutions and the Broad on sequencing.
As new infections hover around 1,500 to 2,000 per day, Biddinger said he’d start to “worry” at about 3,000 a day.
He said it’s “imperative” to continue focusing vaccination efforts in hardest-hit communities to “get transmission down” and said “the local approach is the right way” to do it.
