BATON ROUGE - State health officials are swamped with questions following the abrupt pause on Johnson and Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine.

About 6.8 million people across the country have received the single dose shot. If you're one of them, doctors say not to panic.

"This is a serious condition, but it's a very rare condition. Right now we're talking about six cases in almost seven million Johnson and Johnson doses given out nationwide. Literally one in a million," said Dr. Joseph Kanter with the Louisiana Department of Health.

Kanter points out you have a higher chance of a blood clot due to birth control pills, smoking, or having COVID itself.

"There's likely some type of genetic predisposition that's inciting it in some people, or some other inciting event. It doesn't appear to be straight random," he said.

The FDA says to contact your doctor if you experience severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks of the J and J shot.
However, it's not known yet if the vaccine itself has caused the reported clots.

"For people who got J and J longer than three weeks ago, there really shouldn't be many reasons for concern because it's such a rare occurence."

Louisiana was allocated 8,000 shots for this week. While those are put on pause, health officials are encouraging people to get the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines.

"We've seen no such pattern with Pfizer and Moderna. People who want to get Pfizer and Moderna or have already gotten Pfizer and Moderna should have absolutely no reason to be concerned about what happened," said Kanter.

The J and J shot has only accounted for less than four percent of vaccinations in Louisiana.