Doctors say 'don't panic' about Johnson & Johnson vaccine
CHICAGO - In Illinois, approximately 290,000 people have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If you are one of them, local doctors say you should not panic.
Doctor Shikha Jain from the University of Illinois at Chicago points out you have a higher chance of a blood clot due to birth control pills, smoking or having COVID-19 itself.
"This was only six individuals out of over 6 million that were vaccinated, so that's one in a million people," Jain said in speaking about those reporting blood clots after receiving the J&J vaccine.
Here are the worrying symptoms to watch out for: The FDA says to contact your doctor if you experience severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks of the J&J shot.
It is not known yet if the vaccine caused the reported clots.
Dr. Chris Colbert from the University of Illinois at Chicago said health officials are, "working very hard to provide very great data for the public and also to be transparent and not to lose confidence in the benefits, both individually and collectively of receiving a vaccine."
Illinois was allocated 17,000 J&J shots for this week. As those are put aside, health experts still want people to get the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The Johnson & Johnson shot has accounted for 4-percent of vaccinations in Illinois thus far.
Health experts stress the J&J vaccine has been put on pause, and not gone for good.
"It seems that the pause is happening so that we can better educate the people who are delivering these vaccines and better educate our clinicians, so that we can look out for these potential side effects and know how to treat them," Jain said.
The CDC will have an emergency meeting Wednesday to take a closer look at the data on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.