Aspen ramping up J&J Covid-19 vaccine production - Ramaphosa
President Cyril Ramaphosa says Aspen Pharmaceuticals has assured him that it would beef up capacity to speed up production of a new batch of Johnson & Johnson vaccines this week.
Ramaphosa was addressing the media during the closing of the G7 meeting in the United Kingdom.
He said South Africa will no longer be able to use about 2 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines manufactured at the Gqeberha plant in the Eastern Cape.
This comes after the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided to discard about 60 million doses made at a troubled Baltimore plant because of contamination.
South Africa is struggling with the vaccine rollout amid a third wave of infections.
Ramaphosa said the Aspen CEO assured him that the company will make up for lost time.
“We have had some challenges in relation to the J&J vaccine which also affected us in South Africa with regard to batches and our Aspen factory in SA had gone ahead to manufacture more than 2 million doses which were supposed to be distributed and they were ready to go on and manufacture others, they were told to stop which they did and now, in the end, they are told that they are contaminated.
“So, I am told that they have to dispose of those that they had already manufactured. I spoke to the CEO and he said they are going to start all over again they should be able to gear up their manufacturing capacity, as you all know we stored our hopes for vaccination on the J&J as it is one dose,” he said.
Ramaphosa also had discussions with US President Joe Biden about including the continent in that country’s donation of vaccines.
“In my discussion with President Biden we did say to him that we would like the doses that he is going to donate also to be channelled to Africa, also to be channelled to South Africa and he agreed he is going to do precisely that as soon as possible, so we should be able to get doses on that end,” said Ramaphosa.
“But Johnson & Johnson should be able to get up and going the CEO of Aspen told me that by the end of the week they should be able to have started and manufactured quite a number of vaccine which will be made available not only for South Africa but also for other parts of the continent.”
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