(Reuters) – The US government will allocate 85% less Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to states next week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
Only 785,500 doses of J&J will be allocated, 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 outside the normal schedule for comments on the decrease in numbers.
A New York Times report last week said workers at an Emergent BioSolutions facility in Baltimore, which produced both AstraZeneca Plc and J&J doses, were mixing the ingredients for the two vaccines, destroying 15 million J&J doses.
However, the Baltimore facility has not yet been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and a federal health official told Reuters last week that none of the plant’s vaccine doses have been used in vaccination efforts so far. .
J&J reiterated that it expected to deliver 100 million doses to the government by the end of May.
According to the CDC, California is the main beneficiary of the J&J vaccine, followed by Texas and Florida. Vaccine allocation for California has dropped by about 88 percent, with the state receiving only a maximum of 67,600 doses next week.
A California health official told Reuters that the number would continue to fall in the week beginning April 18, with only 22,400 doses of J&J vaccine allocated to the state.
US President Joe Biden moved the COVID-19 vaccine eligibility target for all American adults until April 19.
Reporting of Shubham Kalia and Aakriti Bhalla in Bengaluru; Mount by Simon Cameron-Moore