(Bloomberg) --

A decision on whether and how to resume vaccinating Americans with the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus shot will probably come by Friday, the top U.S. infectious diseases specialist said.

It would be surprising “if we don’t have a resumption in some form by Friday,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said CBS’s “Face the Nation,” one of four scheduled Sunday talk-show interviews.

One possibility would be to resume using the vaccines with some form of restriction, or some form of warning, Fauci said.

“I doubt very seriously if they just cancel” the vaccine, Fauci said in a separate interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

U.S. health officials paused the use of the J&J Covid-19 vaccine while they seek more data on a rare side effect. Six U.S. women who received the shots developed a severe form of blood clotting six to 13 days after vaccination.

On Thursday, public health officials concluded a meeting on the vaccine without a vote. Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they lacked adequate information to make recommendations on how to respond to reports of the clots.

Fauci said on CBS that new guidance on the vaccine “could be” gender based, “but we don’t know that” yet.

The six cases under investigation were reported in women between the ages of 18 and 48, raising questions about whether the syndrome primarily affects females or young people generally.

“I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment,” Fauci said on NBC. “We did not have enough information to make a narrow restriction off the bat.”

The CDC panel is set to resume on April 23, Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director, said on Friday.

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