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Several states quickly followed the call from federal health agencies on Tuesday to pause the administration of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine after six women in the United States developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within one to three weeks of vaccination.

CVS and Walgreens, the nation’s largest retail pharmacy chains, also said that they would immediately stop Johnson & Johnson vaccinations.

The C.D.C.’s outside advisory committee of independent experts has scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday.

The European Medicines Agency said the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe, after several EU member states, including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, suspended its use over reports of blood clots in a small number of people who received it.

"This vaccine is safe and effective in preventing COVID-19, and its benefits continue to be far greater than its risks," said Dr. Sabine Straus,

The committee made the announcement after days of scientific assessments of the cases of blood clots – some fatal – in people who had received the vaccine.

A growing number of US colleges have said all students must be fully vaccinated before returning to campus, in a move likely to anger some state governors.

In late March Rutgers University became one of the first institutions to declare that having all students vaccinated will allow for an "expedited return to pre-pandemic normal."

Cornell has also created an online registration tool so students and staff can register their vaccination status

Denmark reported on Saturday that two people had experienced brain hemorrhages after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, one of whom died.

A spokesperson for the Capital Region of Denmark confirmed the death, and the Danish Ritzau news agency reported that the other person, a female civil servant in her 30s, was critically ill.

Millions of people in dozens of countries have received the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine with few reports of ill effects, but the European Medicines Agency, the continent’s top drug regulator, conducted a review after several countries paused the use of the vaccine.

The news that a vaccine that has been given to over seven million Americans could cause a rare but serious side effect is understandably concerning. Especially when the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been lauded as a way to reach high-risk and underserved communities, such as people who are homebound.

But I think the pause makes sense. And even though I am a woman and fall within the age group of people who experienced clotting, I am not worried about my own personal risk.

This specific condition, called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, occurs when clots form in a major vein draining blood from the brain, which also can occur with a deficiency in blood platelets. It’s essentially a very specific and unusual type of stroke.

The United States has fully vaccinated more than 100 million people against Covid-19, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- a milestone that comes with optimism about the future.

"I think we can confidently say the worst is behind us,"

"We will not see the kinds of sufferings and death that we have seen over the holidays. I think we are in a much better shape heading forward."

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration are recommending that the United States pause the use of Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine over six reported US cases of a "rare and severe" type of blood clot.

"CDC will convene a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on Wednesday to further review these cases and assess their potential significance," the statement said. "FDA will review that analysis as it also investigates these cases. Until that process is complete, we are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution. This is important, in part, to ensure that the health care provider community is aware of the potential for these adverse events and can plan for proper recognition and management due to the unique treatment required with this type of blood clot."

The most popular link on Facebook about the Johnson & Johnson news was shared by a conspiracy theorist and self-described "news analyst & hip-hop artist" named An0maly who thinks the pandemic is a cover for government control. It's a stark example of what experts warn could be a coming deluge of false or misleading information related to the one-shot vaccine.

In the case of the post by An0maly, a Facebook representative said the company has taken action against previous posts of his that have broken the social media platform's rules. It broadly removed more than 16 million pieces of content over the past year related to COVID-19 misinformation, but because this specific post did not contain any factually incorrect information, it would stay up.

But that story shifted on Tuesday after federal health officials recommended a temporary halt in the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after a handful of reports about blood clots surfaced among the millions who have received the shot.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday recommended that Covid vaccines other than Johnson & Johnson’s should be preferred,

The risk was greatest among women aged 30 to 49, estimated at 1 in 100,000 who had received the company’s shot.

Several laboratory experiments suggest that a single dose of Johnson & Johnson’s shot may offer little defense against infection with Omicron. The company said late last month that it was testing blood samples from clinical trial participants who have received its shot as a booster to see how their vaccine-induced antibodies fare against Omicron.

Pål André Holme, a professor of hematology and chief physician of the Oslo University Hospital who headed an investigation into the Norwegian cases, said his team had identified an antibody created by the vaccine that was triggering the adverse reaction.

“Nothing but the vaccine can explain why these individuals had this immune response,” Prof. Holme said.

In Germany, 13 cases of CVST were detected among around 1.6 million people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Twelve patients were women and three died.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has pleaded with the US public to "hold out just a bit longer" as health experts fear coronavirus variants and pandemic fatigue could lead to a spring surge in Covid-19 cases.

"We're concerned that [cases have] plateaued at a high level, an unacceptably high level,"

The B.1.1.7 variant was first spotted in the United Kingdom. It spreads more easily and appears to be deadlier as well.

In April, federal health agencies recommended that practitioners pause administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after a half-dozen women developed a rare blood clotting disorder about two weeks after vaccination.

Coronavirus vaccinations can cause enlarged lymph nodes in the armpit that will show up as white blobs on mammograms. This type of swelling is a normal reaction to the vaccine and will typically occur on the same side as the arm where the shot was given, said Dr. Geeta Swamy, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and a member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’s Covid vaccine group. It usually lasts for only a few weeks.

Based on all of the reassuring evidence to date, when it comes to fertility or pregnancy, “there are no known safety concerns with the vaccine,” said Dr. Sigal Klipstein, a reproductive endocrinologist in Chicago who is a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Covid-19 Task Force.

On March 25, President Joe Biden set a goal of 200 million shots administered in his first 100 days. The United States has now reached that goal with time to spare.

The White House says the U.S. will have enough vaccine supply to cover every American adult by the end of May,

and the pool of people qualified to give vaccines has been expanded to include paramedics, physician assistants, and dentists, among others.

"Holding a half-million-person rally in the midst of a pandemic is emblematic of a nation as a whole that maybe isn’t taking [the novel coronavirus] as seriously as we should.”

It’s not just that Sturgis went on after the pandemic sidelined most everything else. It also drew people from across the country, all of them converging on one region, packing the small city’s Main Street and the bars and restaurants along it.

And in contrast with participants in the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, many Sturgis attendees spent time clustered indoors at bars, restaurants and tattoo parlors, where experts say the virus is most likely to spread, especially among those without masks.

The United States plans to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada, the White House said Thursday, a notable step into vaccine diplomacy just as the Biden administration is quietly pressing Mexico to curb the stream of migrants coming to the border.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the United States was planning to share 2.5 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and 1.5 million with Canada, adding that it was “not finalized yet, but that is our aim.”

Tens of millions of doses of the vaccine have been sitting in American manufacturing sites. While their use has already been approved in dozens of countries, including Mexico and Canada, the vaccine has not yet been authorized by American regulators.

The embrace of a Scandinavian Jesus is not just foolish but part of a broader historical amnesia. Jesus not only looked like a Middle Eastern Jew; this identity also made him part of an oppressed, dispossessed group. A sense of Jewish powerlessness was the social context for his ministry, and his teaching reflected it.

Jesus offered little advice to the privileged, except to humble themselves and give their wealth away. He had much to say about the inherent value of the poor, the meek and the mourning. This message was one reason he suffered a brutal, unjust, suffocating death at the hands of public authorities.

The Christian message has always been more easily and fully understood by those who lack social privilege — by those who see the face of a nonwhite Jesus.

Rhode Island’s epidemic has been disastrous for immigrant families in multigenerational households. “How do you isolate from someone when you have one bathroom?” Dr. Ranney said.

Cape Verdeans are a close-knit community, and not being able to mourn the dead has been painful, Ms. Tavares said: “Culturally, I think it’s causing us to hurt even more.”On her shift, Dr. Ranney encountered Covid-19 patients who had blood clots or heart problems, or who still needed oxygen weeks after their diagnosis. Many patients had been very careful — or said they had — but were infected after a family member brought the virus into the household.

The story is told too often in Rhode Island. Abby Burchfield, 58, lost her mother and stepfather to Covid-19 within days of each other at an assisted living center in New Jersey in April. Devastated and afraid, she and her family stayed away from restaurants, washed their hands often, and tried to wear masks everywhere. It wasn’t enough.

The coronavirus has now claimed the lives of 32 lawmakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo — more than 5 percent of its Parliament — the authorities say, a reflection of how the coronavirus continues to pose a widespread threat in some parts of the world even as others increasingly resume pre-pandemic behavior.

The toll of the outbreak in Congo is also rising as the country struggles to roll out Covid-19 vaccines, fight off other deadly diseases and grapple with the eruption of one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes.

The central African state has also struggled with its vaccination campaign. In early March, it received 1.7 million AstraZeneca shots from Covax, the global vaccine-sharing partnership.

The European Commission said on Monday it had launched legal action against AstraZeneca (AZN.L) for not respecting its contract for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and for not having a "reliable" plan to ensure timely deliveries.

the Anglo-Swedish company had committed to making its "best reasonable efforts" to deliver 180 million vaccine doses to the EU in the second quarter of this year, for a total of 300 million in the period from December to June.But AstraZeneca said in a statement on March 12 it would aim to deliver only one-third of that by the end of June, of which about 70 million would be in the second quarter. A week after that, the Commission sent a legal letter to the company in the first step of a formal procedure to resolve disputes.

The move follows months of rows with the company over supply issues and amid concerns over the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. Still, while the shot has been linked to very rare cases of blood clots, the EU drugs regulator has recommended its use to contain the spread of COVID-19."We had to send a message to (Pascal) Soriot,

. And the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan helped fund the vaccination effort too. According to the White House, there are now 70,000 sites around the country where people can get vaccines.

When Biden came into office, the country was experiencing about 3,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of new cases per day, only about 15 million people were vaccinated and there was a scarce supply of shots. To turn it around, Biden's team brought a fresh urgency and a desire to lean on the scientific experts who had been ignored so much in the previous year.

The Trump team disputes that there was no long-term plan, saying they handed the Biden administration the playbook.