The Emergent BioSolutions' Baltimore plant confirms that conflated vaccine ingredients several weeks ago spoiled more than 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, spoiling the news for a lot of potential hopeful recipients. Emergent BioSolutions is a manufacturing partner to both Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca and is currently working in the Baltimore, Maryland area producing millions of COVID-19 vaccinations to be delivered throughout the US and abroad.
Photo credit: Emergent BioSolutions
The New York Times reported that regulators were forced to delay authorization of the production lines at Johnson & Johnson's Baltimore facility after workders accidentally made the error.
Emergent BioSoltuions reports that Johnson & Johnson has increased oversight of the facility's work to prevent a similar misstep in the future. Officials caught the error before the vaccines were released into the public and pose no threat to consumers.
The error, though, has put a stop to current and future shipments from the facility while the FDA investigates. This comes as a significant blow to the manufacturing facility, since all future shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was projected to total tens of millions of doses in the next month alone, were to come from the huge Baltimore site. None of those shipments can be produced or released until the FDA has concluded its investigation and all quality control issues are cleared so that the production line is deemed safe.
There have been incidents of vaccine tampering in the US, so officials are doing all they can to be certain that this is a genuine error. There has thus far been no reason to suspect foul play.
This news does not jeopardize US immunization schedules overall, as Moderna is expected to win approval to deliver doses in a larger vial package, containing 15 doses rather than the current 10, and Pfizer's production is running ahead of schedule, but the delay in production is a serious blow to Johnson & Johnson and the Emergent BioSolutions company overall. In 2019, Emergent announced a $50million expansion of the Baltimore facility, which is in part why this location was prepared to take on the COVID-19 vaccine production.