As reported by The New York Times, the US Food and Drug Administration has decided that about 60 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines manufactured at a contaminated plant in the United States be discarded.
The FDA has yet to release a formal statement explaining its decision that could offer greater insight into the viability of two million J&J doses awaiting clearance over contamination concerns in South Africa.
Two million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine awaiting distribution from the Aspen Pharma plant in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, will not be used due to suspicions that a core component of the vaccine was contaminated in a US factory.
South African health authorities have ditched a whopping two million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, because materials for their production came from a US factory in Baltimore that was hit by contamination issues.
South Africa’s health products safety watchdog (SAHPRA) has decided not to approve the use of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses stored at a plant in the city of Gqeberha, since the material they were produced from was “affected” by a contamination incident at the Baltimore factory, the nation’s health authorities confirmed.
The agency suspended use of the doses in question earlier in June as it awaited a safety compliance report from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“Based on what has been announced by the FDA, we are affected in terms of those batches… at the Gqeberha site and what we have there on site is two million,” South African acting health minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane told SABC news on Sunday. She added that those doses had not and would not be used to vaccinate South Africans. It was also confirmed by SAHPRA CEO, Dr. Boitumelo Semete, who said that the jabs in question “cannot be made available to the public.”
The health watchdog meanwhile said in a statement that a new batch containing some 300,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Covid-19 vaccine has been approved by the FDA and will be shipped to South Africa at some point. It did not reveal exact dates of shipments.
