Emergent BioSolutions: Quality Control Systems Worked to Detect Single Covid-19 Vaccine Batch After Quality Lapse
April 01 2021 - 6:50PM
Dow Jones News
By Maria Armental
Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine contract manufacturer
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. said its quality checks had worked,
detecting a batch of vaccines that didn't meet standards.
"Discarding a batch of bulk drug substance, while disappointing,
does occasionally happen during vaccine manufacturing, which is a
complex and multi-step biological process," the company said in a
statement Thursday.
Emergent BioSolutions didn't specify the number of doses
affected or what had happened, but The Wall Street Journal, citing
anonymous sources, reported that the batch was contaminated.
One of those people, The Journal reported, estimated the error
at the Baltimore plant affected approximately 15 million doses of
the vaccine's main ingredient.
J&J, which also didn't discuss what had happened, said it
would be able to make enough doses to meet production targets for
the U.S. in the coming months. J&J's plant in the Netherlands
has been making the main ingredient for the initial U.S. supply of
its vaccine, including the nearly four million doses that were
distributed immediately after it was authorized in late
February.
Emergent also makes at the same plant the main ingredient for
AstraZeneca PLC's Covid-19 vaccine, which hasn't been authorized
for use in the U.S.
--Peter Loftus and Thomas M. Burton contributed to this
story.
Write to Maria Armental at maria.armental@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 01, 2021 18:35 ET (22:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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