Johnson & Johnson takes over the factory where millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been damaged

Washington. Johnson & Johnson will oversee a factory of the manufacturer Emergent BioSolutions, where some 15 million doses of the US pharmaceutical vaccine against covid-19 were damaged during production.

This was announced this Sunday by The New York Times newspaper, which indicates it is an “ extraordinary measure ” by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after it was announced at the Baltimore facility ( Maryland)) were mixed ingredients of the vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca.

The decision also provides that the lab will no longer produce the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has not yet received emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for distribution in the United States.

In a statement, Johnson & Johnson said on Saturday that it “assumes full responsibility for manufacturing the drug for its covid-19 vaccine at Emergent BioSolutions Inc.’s Bayview facilities.”

“The company adds leaders dedicated to operations and quality, and significantly increases the number of manufacturing operations, quality and techniques staff to partner with the company’s specialists already in Emergent,” the statement said, without further details. to specify.

The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company pointed out that the doses of the vaccine distributed to date “meet the company’s strict quality standards and regulations” and predicted that by the end of May, “approximately 100 million individual doses will be released. will issue “. To the United States Government.

“The company continues to work closely with the US Food and Drug Administration to obtain emergency use (US) approval for the Emergent Bayview facility,” he added.

Last Wednesday, the US company had already reported that it had identified a batch “that did not meet Emergent Biosolutions quality standards” and clarified that it “never went to the filling and finishing stages” of its manufacturing process.

According to the note, the plant is not yet licensed to produce the drug for its vaccine.

The New York newspaper, for its part, assured that the FDA has not delivered any of the doses of Johnson & Johnson manufactured by Emergent for distribution, and estimates it will take weeks for the plant to receive approval to distribute the doses it produces. .

The Emergent plant, the newspaper noted, received $ 628 million in June last year as part of the initiative led by Donald Trump’s previous administration to develop vaccines against the coronavirus.

That facility was contracted by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, the version added.

The United States collects 30,668,826 confirmed cases of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and 554,779 deaths from the covid-19 disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 104.2 million people (31.4% of the population) have received at least one dose of the vaccine, of which 59.8 million (18%) have already been fully vaccinated.