Johnson and Johnson, already behind on vaccine deliveries to some lower-income countries, quietly stopped producing COVID-19 vaccine batches late last year, people familiar with the decision told The New York Times.
Six things to know:
1. The sole facility used to produce J&J vaccines is in the Netherlands, and it has instead been developing an experimental but potentially more profitable vaccine for an unrelated virus.
2. The halt is temporary, and the plant will start producing COVID-19 vaccines again after a few months.
3. It's not clear what effect the pause will have on vaccine supply, though it has the potential to reduce the supply by a few hundred million doses, one person close to the matter told The New York Times. Other facilities have been hired to produce the vaccine but either aren't running yet or haven't received regulatory approval to send what they're making to be bottled.
4. J&J's easy-to-deliver shot is the vaccine of choice for many lower-income countries. The move has blindsided two of the company's large customers. Officials from the African Union and COVAX learned of the production pause from Times reporters.
"This is not the time to be switching production lines of anything, when the lives of people across the developing world hang in the balance," said Dr. Ayoade Alakija, co-head of the African Union's vaccine-delivery program.
5. In May, J&J said it aimed to supply up to 200 million doses to COVAX by the end of 2021. COVAX only received 4 million; another 151,000 arrived in January, according to Gavi, a nonprofit that operates COVAX. Seth Berkley, MD, chief executive of Gavi, said the J&J vaccine was central to the program's strategy for fighting COVID-19 last year.
"We really needed their doses in 2021, and we were counting on them," Dr. Berkley told the Times. "They didn't deliver. So we had to find other doses to meet the countries' needs."
6. J&J is "focused on ensuring our vaccine is available where people are in need" and its global production network "is working day and night" to help fight the pandemic, Jake Sargent, J&J spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Times. He said the company is still delivering vaccine batches to facilities for bottling and packaging. J&J also has millions of finished doses in inventory, according to Mr. Sargent, who said the company is continuing to fulfill its contractual obligations to the African Union and COVAX.