The U.S. government will allot nearly 85% less Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to states next week, data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed, Reuters writes.
Only 785,500 J&J doses will be allocated, compared to 4.95 million doses this week. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and J&J did not immediately respond to requests, made outside regular hours, for comment on the drop in numbers.
A report last week said that workers at an Emergent BioSolutions facility in Baltimore, which produced both AstraZeneca Plc and J&J doses, mixed up ingredients of the two vaccines, ruining 15 million J&J doses.
However, the Baltimore facility has not yet been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and a federal health official told Reuters last week that none of the vaccine doses from the plant have been used in vaccination efforts so far.
The company has confirmed that it expected to deliver 100 million doses to the government by the end of May.
According to the CDC data, California is the main recipient of the J&J vaccine, followed by Texas and Florida. The vaccine allocation for California is down by about 88%, with the state set to receive only a maximum of 67,600 doses next week.
A California health official told Reuters that the number will be down further in the week starting April 18, with only 22,400 doses of the J&J vaccine allocated to the state. President Joe Biden on Tuesday moved up the COVID-19 vaccine eligibility target for all American adults to April 19.
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