Workers at a manufacturing plant that develop the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine accidentally mixed up vaccine ingredients, ruining 15 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, The New York Times reports.
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will now have to delay shipments of the vaccine because of the error, per The New York Times.
How did the Johnson & Johnson mixup happen?
The workers at the plant — Emergent BioSolutions, a production facility in Baltimore — accidentally mixed up doses of Johnson & Johnson and the AstraZeneca vaccine, The New York Times reports.
- Both vaccines use the same type of technology — they use a harmless version of the novel coronavirus to create antibodies in your system — but they can’t be mixed together.
- Sometime in February, one of the planet workers confused the two vaccines.
What does this mean for your vaccine dose?
This error will “not affect any Johnson & Johnson doses that are currently being delivered and used nationwide, including the shipments that states are counting on next week,” per The New York Times.
- All the doses currently available were produced in the Netherlands.
- J&J said the Emergent BioSolutions lab had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to make parts of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to NPR.
- Johnson & Johnson told Fox Business that it still expects to follow its distribution timeline of delivering 1 billion doses by the end of 2021.