Alex Gorsky, chairman and chief executive officer at Johnson & Johnson, says the company’s Covid-19 … [+]
Johnson & Johnson chief executive Alex Gorsky said the company’s new partnership with Merck to produce Covid-19 vaccines could exceed a goal to produce 100 million doses by June for the U.S.
“That’s our goal,” Gorsky told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius in a live interview Wednesday morning regarding the company’s plan to accelerate production with its new partner Merck of its one-shot Janssen Covid-19 vaccine, which was granted emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the weekend.
“Our engineers and our scientists are working hand in hand with the Merck supply chain as we speak to make this possible,” Gorsky said. “We’re very confident that… in the coming months we’ll be able to accelerate.”
Gorsky’s comments come a day after the Biden White House announced rival drug maker Merck, which has a long history of vaccine development, would collaborate with Johnson & Johnson to expand production of J & J’s Covid-19 vaccine. The Biden administration Tuesday said “the collaboration will increase manufacture of vaccine drug substance, as well as its fill-finish capacity – two of the biggest bottlenecks facing J&J in the production of its vaccine.”
By exceeding the goal of 100 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine by June, the Johnson & Johnson partnership with Merck would be critical to President Biden’s accelerated timeline for the U.S. to have enough Covid-19 vaccine doses for every adult American by the end of May.
Even without Merck as a partner, Johnson & Johnson has already “distributed almost 4 million vaccines,” Gorsky said.
Johnson and Johnson is committed to 20 million dosages to the U.S. by the end of March and 100 million doses by June. “This is helping to reinforce that in a significant way,” Gorsky said of the Merck partnership.
Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine joins vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer that are already being given to millions of Americans and tens of millions more people around the world.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine only requires one dosage and can be stored in most standard refrigerators, which the company says could help reach medically-underserved areas of the U.S. and globally. Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines require two shots three or four weeks apart and specialized freezers.
Though there are worries the vaccines won’t be as effective against new variants that have emerged in the United Kingdom and South Africa and have begun to spread in the U.S., Johnson & Johnson has said the vaccine will help people from getting sick and hospitalized.
Gorsky said the production of a vaccine against the Coronavirus has come a long way, dating back “13 months ago when we started on this with the genomic sequencing information.”
“When we started, some of the manufacturing facilities were literally parking lots,” Gorsky told the Washington Post Wednesday. “The complexity of bringing up this kind of scale or scope has never been done before.”
Under the partnership with Merck brokered by the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “will collaborate with Merck to repurpose some of its existing Merck facilities for rapid large-scale manufacturing of vaccines and therapeutics for use in public health emergencies including the current pandemic,” HHS said Tuesday.
“The facilities will be available to private sector partners working with the federal government on the Covid-19 response or to produce Merck products against COVID-19,” HHS said in a statement. “Janssen Pharmaceuticals, part of Johnson & Johnson, will be the first federal partner to use repurposed Merck facilities to manufacture COVID-19 vaccine. Merck will use two of its facilities to produce drug substance, formulate and fill vials of J&J’s vaccine.”
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