At the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services, Johnson & Johnson will take charge of the Baltimore contract plant that ruined 15 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, senior federal health officials told The New York Times. Johnson & Johnson confirmed the news Saturday night.
The doses were spoiled because of a mistake at a facility run by Emergent BioSolution, a manufacturing partner to both Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, which has also developed a COVID-19 vaccine, albeit one that has yet to be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. Workers at the plant accidentally mixed up the ingredients of the two shots, delaying future shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, though reportedly not enough to force Johnson & Johnson to modify its goal of delivering 100 million doses to the U.S. government by the end of May.
The error was caught and none of the contaminated doses made it out of the plant, but the Biden administration isn't taking any more chances — production of the AstraZeneca vaccine will move to an alternative site, the company said in a statement. Read more at The Washington Post and The New York Times.