Johnson & Johnson stop production of Covid-19 vaccine; what it may signal

By Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

February 16, 2022 – Johnson & Johnson has officially halted production at all of its Covid-19 vaccine producing facilities; this comes after last week’s announcement that some production would be stopped for the pharmaceutical company to shift focus to a new vaccine, unrelated to Covid-19.

The move comes as vaccination drives slow in higher income countries especially those in Europe and they begin to cancel Covid-19 restrictions.

Johnson & Johnson said, “We strive to improve human health and have worked tirelessly to … build a global manufacturing network across four continents to produce our COVID-19 vaccine. Our manufacturing sites produce multiple products as we have an obligation to supply life changing medicines to patients around the world and bring forward our innovative pipeline of new medicines and vaccines. We manage our production planning accordingly and are currently supplying from our extensive global network based on the demand for our vaccine and the needs of our patients and customers.”

The pharmaceutical company announced on February 8 that the plant would cease COVID19 operations temporarily to work on another vaccine for a different virus The New York Times reports.

The move prompted immediate fears from organizations like COVAX  and the African Union which depends on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to meet their quotas and distribute the vaccines to poorer countries worldwide.

Despite the controversy surrounding the vaccine and its effects in relation to blood clotting Johnson & Johnson has been one of the most distributed brands in the world.

The company has said that they supply based on the needs of patients and customers but only 54 per cent of the world has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 so far. Notable is the staggering unevenness of the vaccination: only 11 per cent of the population has received one dose of a vaccine in low income countries.  Conversely, high income countries have successfully vaccinated over 78 per cent of their populations.

Johnson & Johnson is currently in use in 82 different countries worldwide.

This begs the question of why Johnson & Johnson is stopping production when there are so many persons in lower income countries especially still depending on its vaccine

The NY Times also reports that neither COVAX or The African Union were informed of the decision by Johnson & Johnson beforehand.

The African Union said, “This is not the time to be switching production lines of anything, when the lives of people across the developing world hang in the balance.”

COVAX expressed similar sentiments. They said that Johnson & Johnson had already let them down in 2021 and they couldn’t of the word to be let down in 2022.

In response J&J said “We are focused on ensuring our vaccine is available where people are in need, and we continue to fulfill our contractual obligations in relation to the COVAX Facility and the African Union, we currently have millions of doses of our COVID-19 vaccine in inventory.”

Johnson & Johnson struggled with vaccines expiring before they were able to be used early in production. The FDA extended the expiry dates in July last year from the initial four and a half months.

The vaccines currently have a shelf life of six months.