The
Food
and
Drug
Administration and Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention
issued a joint statement on April 13,
recommending an immediate pause
on administering the Johnson and
Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine
“out of an abundance of caution.” The
ensuing 11-day pause was a result of
six reported cases in which women
ranging from 18 to 48 years of age
experienced severe blood clots — a
new condition known as thrombosis
with thrombocytopenia syndrome
(TTS) — less than two weeks after
receiving the Johnson and Johnson
vaccine. By the time the vaccine had
been brought to a halt, 6.8 million
doses of the vaccine had already been
administered in the U.S.
The J&J vaccine is one of three
CDC-authorized and recommended
COVID-19 vaccinations, along with
the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The J&J vaccine is currently only
approved for those 18 and over and
was reported as 66.3% effective in
clinical trials at preventing COVID-
19 two weeks after vaccination,
compared to Pfizer and Moderna,
which were 95% and 94.1% effective
respectively.
Despite the lower efficacy, the J&J
vaccine was 100% effective in trials
against hospitalizations and death
from COVID-19. Unlike the Pfizer
and Moderna vaccinations, the J&J
vaccination does not need to be stored
at sub-zero temperatures and is
administered in one shot rather than
two. The single required shot makes
administration
and
distribution
easier for communities with limited
access to health resources and may
be more attractive to individuals with
needle anxiety or busy schedules.
Less than a week before the
recommended pause of the J&J
vaccine, University President Mark
Schlissel sent out an email to the
campus community announcing that
7,500 doses of the J&J vaccine would
be available for students to receive at
locations across the three University
of Michigan campuses at no cost.
After the recall was announced,
student appointments for the J&J
vaccine were either switched to Pfizer
vaccine or cancelled altogether.
On April 23, Martino Harmon, vice
president of student life, announced
that being fully vaccinated against
COVID-19 would be required for
all students living in on-campus
housing for the Fall 2021 semester.
The University said students are
considered fully vaccinated two
weeks after receiving a single dose
vaccine — like J&J — or two weeks
after receiving the second shot in a
two-dose vaccine series.
On that same day, the FDA and
CDC put out an additional statement
lifting the pause on the J&J vaccine,
publicly reaffirming that it is both safe
and effective.
As of May 14, including the six
reported cases before the pause, there
have been 28 total confirmed cases of
TTS — six of them males. All of them
were individuals who had recently
received the J&J vaccine, and three
patients died as a result.
Campus
community
remains
confident in Johnson and Johnson
vaccine safety
Although there were concerns
regarding the J&J vaccine’s safety
after the recall, a national poll
conducted by the de Beaumont
Foundation reported that 76% of
those surveyed were just as likely
to get a COVID-19 vaccine as they
were before the pause. Additionally, a
Kaiser Family Foundation poll found
that only 18% of Hispanic women,
11% of Black men and 7% of white
women said the news regarding the
TTS cases made them less likely to get
vaccinated.
U-M students have also expressed
minimal concern about the recall
of J&J or campus vaccination
requirements. As of May 13, Michigan
Medicine had administered over
126,000 COVID-19 vaccines with no
signs of slowing down.
LSA sophomore Sophie Rogoff
received the J&J vaccine prior to the
recall and said she has no concerns
about the safety of the vaccine. She
mentioned her experience with
using birth control, which the FDA
states has between a 0.09% and 0.3%
chance of causing blood clots. The
risk of developing TTS after receiving
the J&J vaccine is significantly lower
than the blood clots occasionally
caused by birth control.
3
Thursday, May 20, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com NEWS
University of Michigan President
Mark Schlissel announced on Apr. 23
that any students who decide to live in
on-campus housing for the 2021-2022
school year must be fully vaccinated
to be eligible for housing. Students
planning to live in the residence halls
must provide proof of vaccination by
July 15, barring limited exemptions
that have not yet been laid out.
A large contingent of higher
education institutions have set forth
vaccination requirements for their
students, while other universities
and colleges are reluctant to mandate
vaccines due to legal and ethical
reasons.
In an email to The Michigan
Daily, Dr. Robert Ernst, Associate
Vice President for Student Life and
Executive Director of the University
Health Service, wrote that the
University will accept COVID-19
vaccinations
that
are
approved
by the United States Food and
Drug Administration or the World
Health Organization. The accepted
vaccines currently include the Pfizer
BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson &
Johnson/Janssen, and AstraZeneca
(Covishield) vaccines.
The
University
recommends
that all students, regardless of living
location, upload proof of their COVID-
19 vaccination to Wolverine Access
before the beginning of the fall
semester. Ernst said this information
will be used to inform plans for the
fall.
Ernst said that Michigan Housing
is working on a specific plan for how
exemptions will be managed and
will share this information soon.
Students who are vaccinated will not
be required to adhere to on-campus
testing requirements in the fall
semester.
“This (vaccine) information will
be used to protect our community in
many ways, including waived testing
and quarantine requirements, social
distancing needs, public health-
informed housing decisions and
administrative planning,” Ernst said.
Professor Emeritus Peter Jacobson,
professor of health law and policy, said
that although the vaccines did not
go through the normal three-phase
process of approval, they are still safe
and effective.
“Nothing is perfect, but just think of
it this way: a little over a year ago, the
hope was that in two years, we would
have a vaccine that might be effective
at the 50% level,” Jacobson said. “We
now have, in one year, a vaccine that’s
effective in the 95% level.”
Regardless of the public concern,
Jacobson said the vaccine mandate at
the University will protect the overall
community as long as the University
gives students and staff of different
socioeconomic backgrounds equal
access to the vaccine. Jacobson said
he is a firm believer in vaccinating
everyone, with the exception of
certain students and staff due to
medical reasons.
“You’re in a small community,”
Jacobson said. “You’re in dorms,
you’re in classes, you’re exposing
professors. You’re exposing U-M
staff. It seems to me that the
University has every right to protect
itself.”
Some critics argue that vaccine
mandates are a violation of the
Nuremberg
code,
which
was
created after World War II to
protect people from non-consensual
experimentation.
Jacobson
said
the vaccines are not experimental
because there is concrete evidence the
vaccines are not harmful to human
beings.
“How do you then have so few side
effects after millions of doses — after
a hundred million doses — in the U.S.,
two hundred million shots in the
U.S.?” Jacobson said.
J. Scott Roberts, professor of health
behavior and health education, said
each university should set policies
according to the needs of their specific
community. One example of this,
according to Roberts, is the execution
of soft mandates, where colleges set
consequences for students and staff
who do not get vaccinated, such as
increased testing and mask wearing.
“Given the politicized environment
we’re in, there is this threat of backlash
and I think before we go there, we
should consider there’s a lot of options
on a continuum here,” Roberts said.
Additionally, Roberts said, clear
and early communication to all
campus community members is
vital to the peaceful enforcement of
vaccine requirements on the U-M
campus.
“Historically, there was great
trust in government public health,
and even reasonable trust in the
pharmaceutical industry not so long
ago, but you think both of those
actors have suffered from a loss of
public trust,” Roberts said.
International Students
Even if international students
arriving on campus in the fall are
unable to get vaccinated in their home
country, Ernst said the University will
provide easy access to vaccination.
The University has partnered with
Michigan Medicine, the Washtenaw
County Health Department and
several local pharmacies to help the
campus community get vaccinated.
Ernst said students who arrive on
campus
unvaccinated,
including
international students who were
not able to get vaccinated before the
fall, will be expected to undergo
surveillance testing until they are
fully vaccinated.
At the time of publication, 12.2%
of people living in China have been
vaccinated against COVID-19. China
is using the Sinopharm vaccine,
which has a lower efficacy rate than
the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. In
2020, there were 3,493 Chinese-born
students enrolled at U-M.
U-M community reacts to the COVID-19 vaccine
mandate for students in on-campus housing
It’s been one month since the FDA
paused the Johnson & Johnson
vaccine: Here’s how vaccine
hesitancy has been impacted
JUSTIN O’BEIRNE, LIZ HWANG &
ISABELLE REGENT
Daily Staff Reporters
EMILY BLUMBERG &
MADELEINE BAUER
Daily Staff Reporters
Read more at michigandaily.com
Read more at michigandaily.com
TESS CROWLEY/Daily
Students and staff following COVID-19 precautions in Bursley Hall.