How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

Vaccine appointments have been very tough to get, its usually because each dose is allocated to an appointment. (I assume)
So there are not enough doses thats why its not easy to get an appointment, as soon as a dose/appt is available someone snatches it up.

But when J&J was suspended they said "All J&J appointments are replaced by Moderna/Pfizer"

Where did all those doses come from? If they had those doses why not (before the suspension) give those out?

Or is it that they have plenty of vaccines but not enough people to give the shots? so the vaccines are just in storage somewhere?

Message edited 4/15/2021 3:38:59 PM.

Re: How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

I was actually wondering the exact same thing....

Re: How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

i believe it's a combo of a few different things.

* yes, there are doses but not enough humans to put them in arms... so there are a few "stockpiled"
* many appointments are being pushed back to accommodate the change
* at least in CA, the J&J vaccine only accounts for 3% of all the vaccines

again, this is how i'm taking in the information out here.

How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

Maybe they are using stored second doses and will cut back additional appointments added over the next couple of weeks?

Re: How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

Re: How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

I'm going to guess that they did / are going to do something with the spacing out of 2nd appointments.

I know here the AZ has the clotting issue that popped up and they won't give it to women under 60 now.

But those that are over 60 and getting the AZ are given 12 weeks in between vaccines (it isn't one dose, so not exactly the J&J one). People getting BioNTech/Pfizer have 6 weeks spacing between appointments.

But the situation is different and our rollout is horrid and numbers are going up. I'm only guessing by what is going on here.

They have been aggressively testing, though. I got a test yesterday (I got the throat culture one) because I was observing a first grade class. The students do a test twice a week, I believe. It was interesting to watch, but kind of sad for the kids, but they were fine and they did it on their own (each kid sticks it up each nostril for 5 seconds and then does the rest of the test and waiting). But it kind of made me think that that will be one of their first memories... But I think we all have some kind of memory like that. Well I do. I remember doing some nuclear drill in 1980 in first grade.

Message edited 4/15/2021 5:12:21 PM.

How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

Perhaps the manufacturing and supply has ramped up but the demand is starting to go down. Just guessing

Re: How were they able to replace the J&J vaccine?

I work in healthcare and truthfully we have had vaccines that we have had a difficult time giving to patients. We get little notice when we get shipments - it's hard to fill appointments on short notice. I think most who wanted the vaccine already got it- at my building another small practice had signs outside advertising they had the vaccine and they couldn't use them all.
I have noticed people are getting a lot more picky with the vaccine - when I got mine in December we took what we could get.