The Trump administration has also deployed a handful of Pentagon personnel to include in Emergent’s quality control department of the plant. They are still there today.
At one point in February 2021, Emergent accidentally mixed active ingredients for J & J’s vaccine with those for AstraZeneca’s lap, said two people familiar with Emergent’s operations. One of the people said that the group of Emergent did not have a test at the end of the month and the company sent the 15 million doses to J & J’s factory in the Netherlands for further testing. J&J performed a series of additional tests that confirmed the infection. Biden officials said they only learned of the infected doses in the last week of March.
The FDA has repeatedly cited Emergent over the years for poorly trained personnel and dealing with mold and pollution in its facilities. Following the April 2020 inspection at Emergent’s plant in Baltimore, the agency quoted the company about problems with the training of employees handling an experimental anthrax vaccine. According to the FDA, the company “did not train employees in the specific operations they perform as part of their function and current good manufacturing practices,” according to The Associated Press. A person familiar with the FDA investigation said the agency’s quote was the lowest level warning the FDA has assigned.
Both Trump and Biden officials argue that the federal government could do little to help Emergent increase rents and quality control around the production of Covid-19 vaccines. Although the government helped finance the development and testing of J & J’s shot, it has no control over the operations at Emergent’s plant or how the company manages its internal inspection units.
J&J said that the additional pollution news is available to dedicate extra staff and resources to the Emergent plant that will work on the matter 24/7. “Specifically, the addition of dedicated leaders for operations and quality is increasing the number of manufacturing, quality and technical operations staff to work with the company specialists already at Emergent,” according to a recently published statement by J&J.
It is unclear how many additional J&J staff have been allocated to the Baltimore plant in recent days.