Johnson & Johnson vaccine will keep coming to Florida for now

Floridians will be able to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for the next two weeks after all, but the future of the supply is uncertain.

After worrying they would be left without the popular single-dose vaccine, state officials got the OK from the federal government Thursday evening for an allotment of 300,000 doses that will arrive next week.

The orders for this week and next week are not affected by Johnson & Johnson’s production problems, said Jared Moskowitz, director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management.

What happens after that isn’t clear. “That’s all they told us,” he said of the state’s talks with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The supply of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine comes from a massive plant in Baltimore that was forced to halt shipments nationwide.

The New York Times reported late

Wednesday that workers at the plant accidentally conflated the vaccines’ ingredients several weeks ago, ruining about 15 million doses and forcing regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines.

The state receives its vaccines from the federal government and distributes them among the Department of Health in each county, hospitals and Publix. The federal government decides how many doses are coming, and state officials place an “order” each Thursday evening saying where the vaccines should be delivered the following week.

A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not comment Thursday about how Florida will be affected through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, which doles out vaccine to Publix, CVS, Winn-Dixie, Walmart and Walgreens — separate from the allocations to the states.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been a preference by many people because it requires only one shot, while Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two.