Vaccine Updates - Fairfax County Health Department

The following information is courtesy of Christopher Revere, Deputy Director for Innovation and Planning, Fairfax County Health Department

The big news over the weekend was the Emergency Use Authorization for the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine. Like Pfizer and Moderna, the new J&J vaccine was shown to be safe and very effective in clinical trials at preventing serious illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19. The most common side effects were injection site pain, headache, fatigue, muscle aches, and nausea. The J&J vaccine is authorized for use in people aged 18 years or older (like the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine; Pfizer is authorized for 16 and older). Significantly - J&J only requires one dose, and the other vaccines each require two doses several weeks apart.  The Health Department is evaluating how to best integrate J&J into our vaccination strategy.  
 
I also wanted to share two helpful blog posts about our vaccine registration process – your members can find the FAQs here and here.
 
There is also a post about understanding the dates on your vaccination card. (hint: it is not an appointment date)
 
Finally, please have your members visit our COVID-19 Vaccine and Registration Data Dashboard to check on their registration status and view the progress being made in vaccinating our community. We reached a major milestone yesterday – we finally made our way through the mountain of 47,000 January 18^th registrations and we are now setting up appointments for folks who registered on January 19^th (not quite as large a group).

Progress!