Zimpapers Logo

BALTIMORE. — Johnson & Johnson is assuming full responsibility regarding the manufacturing of drug substance for its Covid-19 vaccine at Emergent BioSolutions in Baltimore, the company announced Saturday.

This comes after quality control issues at Emergent BioSolutions ruined up to 15 million potential J&J vaccine doses.

“Specifically, the company is adding dedicated leaders for operations and quality, and significantly increasing the number of manufacturing, quality and technical operations personnel to work with the Company specialists already at Emergent,” Johnson & Johnson said. No J&J vaccine doses administered to the public have been tainted.

“All the doses that have been distributed to us that have been administered did not come from this plant,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci.

According to the New York Times, the Biden administration also stopped Emergent BioSolutions from making another Covid-19 vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca. The plant will now solely be devoted to making the J&J vaccine to avoid any future mishaps.

“When you have humans there’s going to be human error. And we’re just hopeful that they get the issues under wraps so that they can produce the vaccine,” said Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott.

The vaccine mix-up has delayed authorisation of the plant’s production lines. J&J said it’s continuing to work with the FDA toward emergency use authorisation of the Bayview facility. – CBSBaltimore.com