The decision to pause using the Johnson &
Johnson vaccine could be a major setback in the vaccination effort,
including with SUNY's plans to vaccinate students on campuses before they leave
for the semester.
SUNY officials are working
with the state Health Department to secure alternative COVID-19 vaccines for
its nearly 400,000 students.
Officials said last week that
they would start offering the one-shot vaccine to all SUNY students statewide.
The plan was to get as many students fully vaccinated before leaving campus
this spring to speed up the return to all in-person learning next semester.
More than 18,000 Johnson & Johnson shots were sent out to half of
SUNY's 64 campuses and Purchase
College officials had requested nearly 1,000 J&J shots for their students.
But school officials at
Purchase College tell News 12
they hadn't started administering the Johnson & Johnson
vaccine to students just yet. But they were about to start within the next
week, so now they've had to quickly come up with an alternate plan for its
students.
Starting Wednesday, Purchase
College will bus any student who had an appointment to
Westchester Medical Center to get a Moderna shot instead. "We'll take a pause on Johnson & Johnson, we'll transfer to the other
vaccines and then we'll go from there. But the whole mission for us for the
next couple of weeks is getting those shots in arms so we can turn the
page," says Chancellor Jim Malatras.
SUNY officials are asking all students with appointments for the Johnson
& Johnson vaccine to contact their campus or
vaccination site so they can help make alternative plans. "They're coming up with another solution to a problem, so it's nice to see that they're trying to get us back to a sense of normalcy," says Purchase College sophomore Alexa Caleo.