15 Million Doses Of Johnson & Johnson Covid Vaccine Affected By Manufacturing Error: Report

A lot of hopes have been pinned on J&J's one-dose, refrigerator-stored Covid vaccine which was touted as an efficient way to inoculate people especially those in remote places.

(Representative Image/Getty)

New Delhi: In a concerning development over Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine, a manufacturing error at a plant involved in the production has affected 15 million doses worth of an ingredient,

Reports by New York Times and Bloomberg have revealed this development while the company downplays the situation stating that has met the most recent vaccine delivery target.

The incident occured at an Emergent BioSolutions Inc. facility in Baltimore. According to the report that first came out in the New York Times, workers in the facility accidentally combined ingredients belonging to the J&J vaccine and another manufactured on the premises for AstraZeneca Plc.

In a statement, J&J stated that a batch of drug substances failed its quality test.

"This quality control process identified one batch of drug substance that did not meet quality standards at Emergent BioSolutions, a site not yet authorized to manufacture drug substance for our Covid-19 vaccine," J&J spokesman Jake Sargent said in an emailed statement, as reported by Bloomberg.

"This batch was never advanced to the filling and finishing stages of our manufacturing process," it added.

The drugmaker assured that it addressed the issue with Emergent and reported it to the Food and Drug Administration.

A lot of hopes have been pinned on J&J's one-dose, refrigerator-stored Covid vaccine which was touted as an efficient way to inoculate people especially those in remote places.

Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the incident will affect the U.S. vaccine rollout. US President Joe Biden has set a target for almost 100 million J&J doses by the end of May.