13/04/2021 (Agence Europe) – The American pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson announced in a press release on Tuesday 13 April that it was postponing the deployment of its Covid-19 vaccine on the European continent. Indeed, as a precautionary measure, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering suspending the use of the vaccine while it investigates several serious cases of blood clots in patients who have been inoculated with the viral vector vaccine (6 cases out of 6.8 million people vaccinated with this vaccine). “We have examined these cases with the European health authorities. We have taken the decision to proactively delay the roll-out of our vaccine in Europe”, the company said in its statement. The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca’s vaccine, based on the same technology, has also recorded rare cases of thrombosis, prompting some states to limit or even suspend its administration (see EUROPE 12694/2). (PH)