United States (US) Government reportedly stopped production of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the Emergent BioSolutions facility in Baltimore. The policy was issued after the incident damaged 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine (J & J).
Factory workers reportedly accidentally combined Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca’s proprietary vaccine ingredients produced at Emergent BioSolutions’ facilities.
Launching Reuters, the US government held J&J responsible for the incident. J&J said it was ready to take responsibility and would give 100 million doses to the US government by the end of May.
J&J also said the damaged vaccine had not yet entered the completion stage.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca, whose vaccine has not been approved in the US. Said it would work with the US government to find alternative locations for producing the vaccine.
The incident is considered to have further hampered AstraZeneca’s efforts to sell vaccines in the US. Previously, the US government criticized AstraZeneca for using outdated data in its vaccine trial results before revising its study.
US Doesn’t Need AstraZeneca Vaccine
The US government’s move to make Baltimore is only tasked with making the J&J vaccine, in order to avoid a similar incident from happening again.
The US’s leading infectious disease doctor said the US may not need the AstraZeneca vaccine. Even if it has received approval.
The United States is known to have an agreement to ship to Mexico and Canada about 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is made at its US facilities.
Launching the New York Times, vakisn J&J and AstraZeneca use the same technology by using a harmless version of the virus, known as a vector, which is transmitted into cells to make proteins which then stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies.
But the vectors in J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines are biologically different and not interchangeable.
Read now: Boss Moderna: We’ll Live with The Corona Virus Forever
