Federal officials are expecting a major influx of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, providing a shot in the arm to nationwide supply as a number of states — including California — prepare to make appointments more widely available to adults.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million Johnson & Johnson doses are expected to be delivered next week, a huge number compared to what’s been shipped to date, according to Jeff Zients, coordinator of President Biden’s COVID-19 task force.
“The company has said they’ll deliver the 20 million [doses] by the end of March,” he said during a briefing Friday, referencing a public production target. “And, from our conversations with the company, they are on track to meet that goal with at least 11 million doses delivered next week.”
As soon as those doses become available to the federal government, he added, “we will, in turn, make them available for delivery to our state, local and federal partners.”
Johnson & Johnson, he pointed out, “is still in its earlier stages of manufacturing” compared to the other available vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, “and will achieve, across time, a more regular weekly cadence.”
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