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Iowa Vaccine Supply Won’t Be Affected by Spoiled Doses Next Week
DES MOINES, Iowa — Thursday morning brought waiting for Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, her administration and the department of public health. Late Wednesday afternoon, The New York Times broke the news that workers at a Baltimore manufacturing plant mixed up ingredients while making the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The plant manufacturers the vaccine along with one by AstraZeneca that the Food and Drug Administration has yet to grant emergency use authorization for Americans. The report said that the workers conflated ingredients from the two different vaccines, ruining 15 million doses.
The Iowa Department of Public Health said late Thursday morning that the spoiled doses won’t impact next week’s supply of vaccine heading for Iowa. But there could be impacts further down the line. “At this time, we see no impact to current or next week’s orders. As we receive updates on potential downstream impacts, we will let you know as soon as possible,” said Sarah Ekstrand with IDPH.
Johnson & Johnson released a statement that said that it detected the mistake at the plant during quality control checks.
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. This batch was never advanced to the filling and finishing stages of our manufacturing process.
Read full Johnson & Johnson statement here.
The Biden administration did not immediately notify Iowa officials about the Johnson & Johnson error. Wednesday night, the Reynolds administration said that it did not know yet whether any of Iowa’s anticipated vaccine supply would be impacted.
Wednesday morning during her weekly briefing, the governor celebrated the news that the state’s vaccine allotment would increase about 25 percent next week compared to the current week. She anticipated 45,800 doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which could help supply mass vaccination clinics for DMACC, the University of Iowa and Dordt University.
“There’s no time like the present,” the governor said as she urged Iowans to get vaccinated during her remarks. “I am pleased to report that we will see a significant increase, especially in the ‘J & J.'”
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. This batch was never advanced to the filling and finishing stages of our manufacturing process.