Colleges that planned to vaccinate students have to deal with temporary J&J pause

For colleges and universities, the one-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 shot has been the simplest solution for quickly and fully vaccinating students who will soon disperse around the country in early May, otherwise risking both infection and transmission as they go.

But when it was paused on Tuesday in order for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration to further investigate rare blood clots in a very small percentage of patients, those schools had to temporarily return to the drawing board.

Schools that had other vaccine options on hand said they would reschedule students to get Pfizer or Moderna shots -- but students would then have to figure out how to get their second shot in three to four weeks if they planned to be home for the summer by then. While this could be a potential inconvenience for students, finding a second dose elsewhere is also likely possible as vaccine supply continues to increase nationwide.

Still, many schools hoped the pause would be lifted soon so they could continue administering the J&J vaccine.

"Our concern, and what we're going to work through now, is ... we like the Johnson and Johnson vaccine ... because it was one and done," SUNY Chancellor James Malatras said on Tuesday. "It is very easy for a residential student to get one shot and then go home for the semester."

Though the White House coronavirus response team has said it hopes the pause won't last longer than days or weeks, more concrete guidance is expected to come on Wednesday, when an independent panel of CDC experts will meet to review the data and recommend next steps.

At the same time, most schools are fighting a time crunch, attempting to vaccinate as many students as possible in the short timeframe between when students become eligible -- which, in most states, has been over the last few weeks -- and when they leave for the summer in early May.

Recent data shows that cases are rising among young, unvaccinated people, even as cases drop among the most high-risk, elderly groups who are mostly vaccinated. And public health experts worry that college students could carry the virus home with them. ...