J&J vaccine for Florida is limited

More doses expected to arrive in April

If you get a Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the next few weeks, consider yourself fortunate.

The federal government has distributed all of the inventory the manufacturer supplied on March 1 — 3.9 million doses. Florida received 175,100 of them.

Johnson & Johnson says supply will be limited for the next couple of weeks, and then it expects to deliver approximately 16 million additional doses by the end of March, according to Jeff Zients, the coordinator of the president’s COVID-19 task force. Florida does not yet know what its share of future doses will be.

The single-shot vaccine has been popular in Florida, but the state has not received any doses after the initial shipment, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday. He said the state may not receive more until April.

“If you have your heart set on Johnson & Johnson but you are able to get Pfizer or Moderna, I would say get it,” DeSantis said. “I can’t say we are going to have more Johnson & Johnson by April 1.”

Samantha Bequer, press secretary for the Florida Division of Emergency

Management said the federal government allocated 24,100 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine the week of March 15, which is expected to arrive in Florida to be distributed early next week.

“After these doses are received, the state is not expecting to receive future doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine for at least the next two weeks. As we wait for additional allocations of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, the state is prepared to continue to support all current vaccination efforts through Moderna and Pfizer vaccines,” she said.

“At the time, the federally-supported vaccination sites in Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Miami will no longer offer the Johnson and Johnson vaccine,” she said. “The sites will only offer the Pfizer vaccine, but the sites are prepared to administering up to 4,000 vaccines per day, per site.”

President Joe Biden has announced the United States will order another 100 million COVID19 vaccine doses from Johnson & Johnson.

A Johnson & Johnson spokesperson said despite the temporary delay, the company expects to deliver a total of 20 million doses by the end of March. In addition, the company plans to deliver 100 million single-shot vaccines to the U.S. during the first half of 2021. The U.S. government will manage the allocation and distribution of the vaccine, she said.

With demand for the coronavirus vaccines severely exceeding supply, Merck is helping get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to the market quicker. The addition of Merck’s manufacturing facility is expected to almost double J&J’s production capacity, However, Merck said it would take at least two months to prepare a plant to help package and ship the J&J vaccine, and even longer to get another plant to produce the vaccine itself.”

This week, Florida received a total of 492,270 doses of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

“We are going through those,” DeSantis said. “We are doing 150,000 to 160,000 shots every single day.”

But DeSantis said Thursday the state is not projecting an increase in its allocation of vaccine doses from Pfizer or Moderna for the next two or three weeks.

“We thought by April the floodgates would open,” he said. “We know in the future we will be getting more, but it is not happening over the next couple of weeks, it would seem.”

Retail pharmacies in Florida get doses directly from the federal government rather than the state and are making appointments to give out the Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

“We’ve received additional supply of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and a limited supply of the Janssen [Johnson & Johnson] vaccine to administer in Florida,” said Tara Burke, a spokeswoman for CVS. On Wednesday, the governor announced CVS will increase from 157 locations to 182 throughout the state that are offering vaccines.