Greece freezes the administration of Johnson & Johnson vaccines until the decision of the European Medicines EMA. “The specific vaccine will not administrated until we have an update from the EMA,” general secretary for Primary Health Care Marios Themistokleous announced on Friday evening.
Administration of J&J was scheduled to start on Monday, April 19, after 33,600 doses arrived three days ago.
“There is no administration of J&J vaccine from Monday,” Themistokleous told Mega TV.
According to Themistokleous’ previous statements, J&J was to delivery 70,000 vaccine doses in April, 300,000 in May and 960,000 in June.
The specific vaccine has caused concern after the development of blood clots to inoculated people.
Any negative decisions regarding the J&J vaccine would overthrow the government plan to have 1,330,000 inoculated with the single-dose vaccine. This means that some 10% of the vaccinated population -according to the plan – will be out of the program and thus at a time when Greece is desperately seeking to achieve “heard immunity” with 60%-70% of the general population inoculated.
So far, Greece has vaccinated 1,620,000 people out of 10 million and only half of them have received both doses.
Worth noting that Greece did not halt vaccinations with AstraZeneca while EMA recommendations were due.
EMA is expected to announce its recommendations for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Tuesday afternoon, April 20.
