Illustration of the Johnson & Johnson Coronavirus Vaccine
Given Ruvic | Reuters
Johnson & Johnson will not have a “large inventory” of its Covid-19 vaccine ready until regulatory approval is expected this month, President Joe Biden’s Covid Tsar said Wednesday.
Jeff Zients said the government has learned in recent weeks that J&J will only produce “a few million” doses if its one-time vaccination is likely approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Federal and state health officials expected the supply of vaccines to increase rapidly following the approval of J & J’s emergency vaccine. The FDA has scheduled a meeting of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Feb. 26 to discuss the vaccine, and the US could approve the vaccine the next day.
J&J currently has a deal with the U.S. government to deliver 100 million doses of its vaccine by the end of June, said Zients, the president’s Covid-19 response coordinator. Assuming the vaccine is approved, the Biden government will work with J&J to ramp up the supply as soon as possible, he said, adding that US officials hope many of those doses will be available in the first months of the rollout. .
“We are committed to working with the company to accelerate the delivery schedule,” Zients told reporters during a White House newsletter on the pandemic.
The news comes as the Biden administration works to ramp up the supply of doses after states complained that demand for the shots was rapidly outstripping supply. According to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 39.7 million of the approximately 331 million Americans have received at least their first dose of Pfizers or Moderna’s two-dose vaccines. And 15 million of those people have already gotten their second chance.
Biden announced Thursday that the US had received an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 100 million more of the Moderna vaccine, bringing the total US supply to 600 million doses. Because the vaccines require two doses, a total of 600 million doses would be enough to inoculate 300 million Americans.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that the Biden administration was increasing the number of Covid-19 vaccine doses shipped to the states each week, this week 13.5 million doses and doubling the number sent to the pharmacy. is going.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that most Americans will have access to a Covid-19 vaccine in mid to late May or early June, a slight delay compared to earlier predictions from late March and April.
The White House chief medical adviser said the federal government was expecting “significantly more” starting doses from J&J.
“I’m a little disappointed that the number of doses we get early from J&J is relatively small, but as we get further into the spring there will be more and more,” said Fauci.
Meanwhile, Pfizer and Moderna are looking into whether their vaccines can prevent transmission of the virus, he said Wednesday, adding that early studies point in a “favorable direction.”