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Johnson & Johnson vaccine: glitch in the US is making circles around the world
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The massive destruction of unsuitable corona vaccines from the manufacturer Johnson & Johnson hits Germany hard. Numerous defects were discovered at a US plant in Baltimore. According to the Federal Ministry of Health, these production problems mean that around 6.5 million fewer corona vaccine doses will be delivered to Germany than planned by the end of June. “It's unfortunate because every vaccine dose counts. We therefore expect J&J to deliver this amount as soon as possible in July, "said a spokesman for the ministry.
According to the information, 10.1 million doses of the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson were expected in Germany for the current quarter.
By the end of last week, however, only 1.7 million servings had arrived.
The drug was administered to 1.25 million people.
The failure also hits the German vaccination campaign hard because J&J is only injected once - and has to be compensated for by twice the amount of other vaccines.
The background to the problems at Johnson & Johnson is that, according to information from the New York Times, the US authorities ordered the destruction of almost 60 million vaccine doses that were manufactured in a Baltimore plant because of possible contamination.
Without disclosing or confirming the number of vaccine doses affected, the FDA said it had approved two batches of the vaccine for use.
According to information from the Reuters news agency, about ten million cans have been released by the authorities.
Several other batches are not suitable for use, the FDA also announced.
Others would be examined.
The spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Health pointed out that it is currently expected "that Biontech with 50.3 million doses, Moderna with 6.4 million doses and AstraZeneca with 12.4 million doses each meet their current delivery commitments for the second quarter".
The company doctors have now also joined the vaccination campaign. For the first time, the preparation from Johnson & Johnson will be available as a second vaccine. In the week from June 21, 192,000 cans of it are to be delivered, the Federal Ministry of Health announced on Saturday. Then there are 602,550 cans from Biontech, making a total of 794,550 cans.
According to the Federal Ministry of Health and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), more than a quarter of the population in Germany is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The vaccination rate was given on Saturday at 25.7 percent.
All vaccinations up to and including Friday are taken into account in the current RKI figures.
According to this, 21,350,096 people are fully vaccinated.
The rate of first vaccinations was given as 48.1 percent of the population.
This now affects more than 40 million people.
In the federal states of Bremen, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, more than half of the population has already been vaccinated at least once, but in Saxony it is only 43 percent.
mmq / Reuters / AFP
