According to the latest news, Johnson & Johnson has been put in charge of coronavirus vaccine production at a Baltimore plant. Significantly, 15 million doses were destroyed several weeks ago at a factory.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services put Johnson & Johnson in charge of the Emergent BioSolutions Inc plant in Baltimore. The department has also stopped British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc from using the facility in order to avoid future mistakes.
The Baltimore now will only produce a single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine.
Johnson & Johnson confirmed the move and announced it was assuming full responsibility for the manufacturing of drug substances at Emergent.
J&J is adding committed leaders for operations and quality. Moreover, the company is expanding the number of manufacturing, quality, and technical operations personnel to work with the company specialists already at Emergent.
The company has already intensified its control over Emergent BioSolutions’ work in order to avoid further quality lapses.
AstraZeneca will collaborate with Biden’s administration
AstraZeneca reported that it would collaborate with Biden’s administration. In fact, the firm aims to find an alternative site for its vaccine production. Remarkably, it has not been approved in the United States.
The change comes after the revelation that Emergent workers accidentally conflated the ingredients of the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines several weeks ago. It destroyed up to 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. Therefore, it caused regulators to linger authorization of the facility’s vaccine production. Notably, Emergent is a manufacturing partner to AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
According to the New York Times, U.S. officials are concerned that the Emergent plant’s accident could discourage public confidence in the vaccines.
It has lagged future shipments of Johnson & Johnson doses in the U.S. The FDA is investigating the incident.
Moreover, federal officials suppose to have sufficient doses from J&J and the two other approved vaccine producers.
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