J&J vaccine allocations to states plummet
Production clearance remains on hold
Johnson & Johnson has abandoned a pledge to deliver 24 million additional doses of its vaccine by the end of April amid the continued failure of its troubled contract manufacturer in Baltimore to win government manufacturing certification.
With domestic production of the company’s vaccine still unapproved, the government slashed its allocation of the J&J vaccine to states by 86% to 700,000 doses next week, down from nearly 5 million, a cut that Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan called “very concerning.”
The cuts will make it harder across the country for much of April to find the Johnson & Johnson shot, which some people favor because it requires only one trip to a vaccination site. The hashtag # OneAndDone has become popular among people receiving it.
Washington, D.C., is in line to receive just 1,300 doses of the company’s vaccine in the coming week, down from 10,800 in the past week, according to the data tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Biden administration put Johnson & Johnson in control of manufacturing at the Emergent BioSolutions plant in Baltimore after 15 million doses of its vaccine were contaminated by another vaccine made at the plant by AstraZeneca.
Administration officials suggested the problems in ramping up, mostly due to the lack of manufacturing certification at the plant, should be resolved in a matter of weeks.
The rollout of Johnson & Johnson shots, authorized in February by the Food and Drug Administration, has been so slow that it is not yet a significant factor in the U.S. vaccination surge, which has been fueled by the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna two-shot vaccines.
Only 5 million Johnson & Johnson shots have been administered, according to CDC data, compared with 170 million shots of the other two vaccines.
“Johnson & Johnson expects of weekly a relatively dose delivery low level until the company secures FDA authorization,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday. “With FDA authorization, the company expects a cadence of up to 8 million weekly doses total across state and federal channels later in April.”
The company and government have not said when that clearance is expected.
Johnson & Johnson and President Joe Biden’s team have said that the company met its obligations to produce 20 million doses of its vaccine by the end of March. It met that goal with a delivery of 11 million doses last week. The company has imported doses from overseas while the Emergent plant remains unapproved. Domestic capacity will increase further later this year when a partnership with Merck for production at Merck factories bears fruit.