THURSDAY, April 1, 2021 (HealthDay News) — A production error that ruined about 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson one-dose COVID-19 vaccine could delay upcoming shipments of the vaccine in the United States.
The incident occurred at a plant in Baltimore run by Emergent BioSolutions, a manufacturing partner to both Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. Workers accidentally mixed up the two vaccines’ ingredients in late February, The New York Times reported.
Authorization of the plant’s production lines has been delayed as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigates the error. Johnson & Johnson plans to increase oversight at Emergent BioSolutions to avoid further problems, The Times reported. The situation will not impact doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine currently being delivered and used across the United States because all of those doses were produced in the Netherlands. However, all further shipments of the vaccine in this country — tens of millions of doses expected in the next month — were to come from the Baltimore plant, The Times reported. Shipments of those doses are now in doubt while the quality control problems are corrected, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The mistake by Emergent went undiscovered for days until Johnson & Johnson quality control checks uncovered it, people familiar with the situation told The Times. By then, up to 15 million doses had been contaminated. None of the doses ever left the plant, and the lot has been quarantined.
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