Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.

Our goal is to bring scientific evidence

and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists,

community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas

or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jh.h.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith Rogers, producer of Public Health On Call.

This week, the FDA paused the use of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine because of

reports of six women under 50 who developed a rare form of blood clots called cerebral venous

sinus thrombosis. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about what this means

for vaccine rollouts, vaccine hesitancy, and what might happen next.

This bonus episode has been lifted from yesterday's Facebook Live, which can be seen at

Facebook.com slash Johns Hopkins SPH. Let's listen. Hi, I'm Stephanie Desmond, the co-host of Public

Health on Call. And today I'm talking with a former

FDA official, Josh Sharfstein. The FDA paused the use of the Johnson and Johnson COVID vaccine

this week because of reports of six women under 50 who developed a rare form of blood clot called

cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Can you please walk us through where we are right now?

Sure. Thanks for having me,

Stephanie. As you know, I'm also a co-host of Public Health on call. These concerning cases were identified through the surveillance of vaccine safety in the United States, and FDA and CDC

announced that they would pause, recommend

a pause in vaccinating until more was understood. And so right now they're in the process

...