U.S. Secures 100 Million More Doses of J&J’s One-Shot COVID Vaccine

Fresh off the FDA’s March 1 authorization of Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) single-shot vaccine, President Biden announced that the U.S. has secured an additional 100 million doses of the shot, doubling its original supply agreement with the company.

“I’m doing this because in this wartime effort we need maximum flexibility. There’s always a chance that we’ll encounter unexpected challenges or there’ll be a new need for a new vaccine effort,” he said.

Biden, who repeated his vow that the country would have enough vaccine stock to inoculate every adult American by the end of May, was joined Wednesday by J&J CEO Alex Gorsky and Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, who met at the White House to discuss the recently announced vaccine manufacturing partnership between the two pharma titans.

Frazier, who is set to retire as Merck’s CEO on June 30, said that the company has been granted funding from the government to adapt its manufacturing plants to produce COVID-19 vaccines and medicines, including the J&J vaccine.

“With the support of the Biden administration, and specifically the [Defense Production Act], we will expedite the modification of our equipment,” he said.

Merck, normally a J&J rival, has agreed to lend its vaccine manufacturing prowess in a partnership that was brokered with help from the White House. It’s not yet clear how many doses the alliance will ultimately produce, but it’s known that Merck will make the drug substance used in the vaccine and help to expand fill-finish capacity (DID, Mar. 3).

Biden pledged that if the U.S. finds itself with a surplus of COVID-19 vaccines, it will be shared with the rest of the world, noting that his administration has already agreed to support the World Health Organization’s COVAX program in its global effort to supply shots to lower- and middle-income countries.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said yesterday that the extra supply of J&J doses, which isn’t expected to be delivered until the second half of this year, could potentially be used for administering booster shots, vaccinating children if authorized or against viral variants.

On Tuesday, the press secretary said that the government will ship approximately 18.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in total this week. That number is lower than last week’s 21 million doses, which included 3.9 million doses of J&J vaccines, because there will be no J&J shots among this week’s allotments.

The company was not expected to deliver any shots this week due to delays in manufacturing, but it has said that it hopes to close out March with 20 million doses delivered and it still expects to meet its end-of-June deadline for 100 million shots.

The U.S. government reached an initial $1 billion agreement with J&J in August 2020 that secured it 100 million vaccine doses and kept the door open for 200 million additional shots (DID, Aug. 2020).  The new order exercises the government’s option for 100 million of those doses.

The European Commission is expected to authorize the J&J vaccine today, following an emergency meeting by the European Medicines Agency’s advisory committee to discuss the vaccine. — James Miessler