Johnson & Johnson Begins European Deliveries of COVID-19 Vaccine

In a much-needed development, Johnson & Johnson began delivery of its one-shot COVID-19 vaccine within the EU yesterday as the trade bloc continues to clamor for enough doses to inoculate its 446 million residents.

The U.S. drugmaker has committed to providing the EU with a total of 55 million doses by the end of June, which will bolster Europe’s efforts to inoculate 70 percent of adults by summer’s end.

In Europe, J&J subsidiary Janssen is manufacturing the vaccine at its Leiden facility in the Netherlands, and it has also enlisted Catalent Pharma in Italy and Reig Jofre in Spain to help manufacture vaccines for EU member states.

It’s unclear how the deliveries that have now begun in Europe could impact U.S. allocations of the vaccine. The current U.S. supply of J&J shots also comes from the Netherlands facility, and the drugmaker recently cautioned the U.S. government that its vaccine deliveries will be slow until it gets FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to produce vaccines at the Emergent BioSolutions’ Bayview facility in Baltimore, Md.

That plant, which previously hosted manufacturing operations for the AZ vaccine as well as the J&J shot, was the site of a mix-up of that led to the disposal of 15 million J&J shots meant for Europe. The fiasco led to J&J taking full control of the facility following intervention by the U.S. government (DID, April 5).

The Emergent plant could receive authorization this month, after which J&J would be able to deliver 8 million doses per week for the U.S., according to White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients (DID, April 12).

The EU’s Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, has expressed optimism as vaccine deliveries ramp up, saying that the EU expects 360 million doses of vaccines to be delivered in the second quarter, more than three times the 108 million doses it received in the first quarter.

Breton said that he expects the EU’s yearly production capacity to exceed three billion doses by the end of this year. — James Miessler