SA expects FDA nod for Johnson & Johnson vaccines by Friday
The US Food & Drug Administration’s move will clear the way for the government to rapidly scale up its mass inoculation drive
SA’s medicines regulator expects the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) will approve the release of Johnson and Johnson’s (J&J) Covid-19 vaccines later this week, clearing the way for the government to rapidly scale up its mass inoculation drive.
The government’s plans to use the shot as the workhorse of its vaccination programme were dealt an unexpected blow in early May, after the FDA flagged problems at a US company contracted by J&J to make a key vaccine ingredient. The development put a hold on millions of doses of J&J’s shots made by contractors that relied on the components made by Emergent BioSolutions, including SA’s Aspen Pharmacare, which at that stage had 1.1-million doses of the vaccine ready for dispatch. And it left the government with only limited quantities of Pfizer’s double-shot vaccine with which to begin the national vaccination programme on May 17, forcing it to get off to a slower than anticipated start...
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