US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson has had to throw away 15 million doses of its corona vaccine after it was found to be inoperable due to an accident in the manufacturing process, The New York Times reports.
The production of the corona vaccine developed in Leiden has now been delayed because the American regulator has to carry out extra checks on the production line in the Baltimore factory.
Johnson & Johnson has confirmed that a batch of vaccines did not meet the quality requirements. The pharmaceutical company further stated that the batch had not yet been bottled when the manufacturing defect was discovered. Employees at the Baltimore factory are said to have accidentally mixed ingredients from two different vaccines.
The plant belongs to Emergent BioSolutions, which manufactures the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the US. The producer is also working with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which developed the so-called Oxford vaccine.
As a result of the manufacturing error, the Johnson & Johnson vaccines’ distribution in the United States has now slowed significantly. The incident is harrowing for the pharmaceutical company. It was hoped that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, one shot of which is enough, would dramatically speed up the vaccination program in the US.