(Reuters) – The U.S. government will allocate nearly 85% less Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to states next week, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed.
Only 785,500 doses of J&J will be awarded, compared to 4.95 million doses this week. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and J&J did not immediately respond to requests made outside normal hours for comment on the decline in numbers.
A report by the New York Times last week states that workers at an Emergent BioSolutions facility in Baltimore, which produces both AstraZeneca Plc and J&J doses, mixed the ingredients of the two vaccines, which cost 15 million J & J doses ruined.
However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved the Baltimore agency, and a federal health official told Reuters last week that none of the plant’s vaccine doses have been used so far.
J&J reiterated that it was expected to deliver 100 million doses to the government by the end of May.
According to CDC data, California is the main recipient of the J&J vaccine, followed by Texas and Florida. The vaccine allocation for California is about 88% lower, and the state will only receive a maximum of 67,600 doses next week.
A California health official told Reuters the number would drop further in the week of April 18, with only 22,400 doses of J&J vaccine being allocated to the state.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday raised the COVID-19 vaccination target for all U.S. adults to April 19.
Reporting by Shubham Kalia and Aakriti Bhalla in Bengaluru; Edited by Simon Cameron-Moore