Benefits of Johnson & Johnson vaccine still 'outweigh the risks': Dr. Nesheiwat

Fox News medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat provided insight into the Federal Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control Prevention calling for a "pause" on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine rollout out of an "abundance of caution" after six instances of blood clotting in recipients, arguing that blood clots are "extremely rare" and the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine still "outweigh the risks" on FOX Business' "Mornings with Maria." 

FDA HALTS J&J COVID-19 VACCINE: WHAT WE KNOW

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
JNJ	JOHNSON & JOHNSON	160.68	+0.98	+0.61%

DR. JANETTE NESHEIWAT: The best thing to do is take care of your body, making sure you're drinking lots of fluids, avoid smoking, getting plenty of rest, getting a good, well-balanced diet, and just overall taking care of yourself and really paying attention to your body and any changes that you might feel if you wake up, for example, and you feel some upper back pain or chest pain or trouble breathing or a headache that's different than normal, then you want to go and get medical help right away, because, again, this can be treated with blood clotting medications. And again, it's important to keep in mind, Maria, that this is rare, extremely rare. Again, six cases out of over seven, over six million vaccines that have been given. It's important to understand that the majority of the vaccines given in this country are Pfizer and Moderna have been the majority. So Johnson Johnson plays just a tiny role in the vaccination program. 

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That's a really good question. And this is why it's important, Dagen, to look at the facts and look at the studies overall. The benefits right now still outweigh potential risks because we have already lost over half a million people to coronavirus. So for some groups, for some populations like those over the age of 65, the benefit of this vaccine is still going to outweigh any potential risk. So also, it's important, again, to understand it's only six cases out of over six million that have been given. And we put a pause. So we have conducted trials to get the vaccine FDA emergency use authorization prior to getting it into the arms of Americans. And now we're stopping it to conduct more studies afterwards. So we are really being aggressive, aggressive. The FDA is really being aggressive to ensure the safety of Americans. But as it is right now, the benefits outweigh the risks. But it's important that they conduct this investigation to see if there is a correlation between the vaccine and these very rare blood clots.

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