Font size
Investors are counting on vaccines to end the virus crisis.
Credit to Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson‘s
The Covid-19 vaccine holds tremendous promise as a way out of the worst pandemic. Supplied as a single dose, without the extreme storage requirements of the vaccines
Pfizer
and
Modern,
it could speed up global vaccination if it proves effective.
But on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the company is facing delays in manufacturing the vaccine, putting it up to two months behind its original production schedule. The report comes amid increasing expectation for data from Johnson & Johnson’s (ticker: JNJ) Phase 3 study of the vaccine, expected in the coming weeks.
Speaking at JP Morgan’s healthcare investors conference, Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson & Johnson, said the company was aiming to have “hundreds of millions of doses” of the vaccine available in the first half of this year, and “close to a billion”. at the end of the year.
“We are still on track to hit those volumes,” said Gorsky. “And again, we work day and night to see what else we can do to make it even more effective and safer, more compliant and qualitatively better.”
But according to Wednesday’s New York Times report, the company is lagging behind the manufacturing promises it has made to the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed.
Under the terms of that deal, announced in August, the company agreed to deliver 100 million doses of its vaccine to the US government for $ 1 billion. The company did not disclose any specific production timeline goals at the time, but the New York Times reported Wednesday that it was scheduled to have 12 million doses ready by the end of February.
The Times says the production schedule has now been delayed by two months. A Johnson & Johnson official interviewed by the Times did not comment on the production, but an Operation Warp Speed official confirmed a delay in the paper. The Times reports that the company is now expected to catch up to its original production schedule by the end of April. By then, it had been planned to deliver more than 60 million doses.
Johnson & Johnson did not immediately respond to a question from Barron’s about the Times report early Wednesday morning.
Shares of Johnson & Johnson were up 0.4% in premarket trading. The stock is up 7.6% in the past 12 months.
Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]