On June 14, Facebook user Tamu Na and Dato Salukvadze published the screenshots featuring information, according to which millions of doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine should be disposed. Tamu Na writes that Amiran Gamkrelidze had assured the public of the vaccine’s suitability when speaking about its delivery to Georgia. As for Dato Salukvadze, he speaks about already vaccinated individuals and leaves an impression that they’ve received “spoiled” vaccines.
Posts by Facebook users are manipulative. Even though specific batches of Johnson & Johnson vaccine have to be disposed of due to manufacturing mistake, the post generalizes the occurrence giving the impression as if Johnson & Johnson vaccine, in general, poses a threat, which isn’t true. The decision to dispose of a specific batch due to manufacturing mistake aims to protect the interests of vaccine receivers and doesn’t raise questions about the quality of the vaccine.
Information provided in the Facebook posts about the disposal of millions of doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is true, however, authors of the posts generalize this occurrence to the efficacy and safety of Johnson & Johnson, which is manipulation.
On June 11, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a statement noting that several batches of Johnson & Johnson vaccine manufactured at the Baltimore plant weren’t suitable to use and recommended discarding them. The statement doesn’t mention the number of doses, however, per New York Times’ information, the doses amount to 60 million.
In the statement, it’s written that the aforesaid batches at the Baltimore plant weren’t produced in compliance with the established GMP requirements and several batches of the produced vaccines didn’t meet the requirements for usage in terms of quality and efficacy..
As FDA writes, the Baltimore plant hasn’t received the FDA authorization to produce vaccines and their components yet, and thus, no COVID-19 vaccine manufactured at this plant has been distributed in the U.S.
The decision to dispose of several batches of the vaccine has left several countries, including the U.S., Germany, and South Africa, without a few million doses of vaccine that were intended for them..
Employees at the Baltimore plant also made a mistake in producing Johnson & Johnson vaccine in late February by mixing AstraZeneca ingredients into the Johnson vaccine and as a result, 15 million doses of vaccine produced at that time were disposed.
See Myth Detector’s article on the topic:
What Actually Happened at the Emergent BioSolutions Factory?
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