Fauci expects Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine decision on April 23

More than 7 million people in the US have received Johnson & Johnson’s shot

A decision about whether to resume administering the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine should come Friday, when an expert panel that is advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to meet, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert.

“I think by that time we’re going to have a decision,” Fauci said Sunday on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

“I don’t want to get ahead of the CDC and the FDA and the advisory committee,” he added, but said he expected experts to recommend “some sort of either warning or restriction” on the use of the vaccine.

Read: J&J vaccine and clots: A risk, if it exists, is tiny

Federal health agencies recommended putting injections of the vaccine on pause on Tuesday while they investigated whether it was linked to a rare blood-clotting disorder. All 50 states, in addition to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have stopped administering the vaccine.

The unusual disorder includes blood clots in the brain combined with low levels of platelets, blood cells that typically promote clotting. The combination, which can cause clotting and bleeding at the same time, was initially documented in six women between the ages of 18 and 48 who had received the vaccine one to three weeks prior. One of the women died and another was hospitalized in critical condition.

This pattern has prompted questions about whether vaccinations could resume in men or in older people. But because women fill more of the health care jobs for which vaccinations have been prioritized, it is not clear how much the problem might affect men, too. On Wednesday, two more cases of the clotting disorder were identified, including one in a man who had received the vaccine in a clinical trial.

Read: Western warnings tarnish Covid-19 vaccines the world badly needs

About 131.2 million people in the United States have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, or roughly half of all American adults, according to the CDC. More than 7 million of those people have received Johnson & Johnson’s shot. If there is a link between the vaccine and the clotting disorder, the risk remains extremely low, experts say.

Fauci said that he expected all high school students to become eligible for vaccination before school begins in the fall, with younger children eligible no later than the first quarter of 2022.