Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has temporarily paused production of their Covid-19 vaccine to pursue something more lucrative, but SA will not fall victim to the shortfall.
The pause in production, according to the New York Times, is a worry for much of the developing world as the J&J vaccine is their main supply in the fight against Covid-19.
The paper said J&J “late last year quietly shut the only plant making usable batches of the vaccine”, and the facility in the Dutch city of Leiden “has instead been making an experimental but potentially more profitable vaccine to protect against an unrelated virus”.
As one of only two vaccine brands being rolled out in SA, this could be a cause of concern, but local pharmaceutical company Aspen has reassured the dip in production won’t affect it.
Late in 2020, Aspen Pharmacare made a deal with J&J that it would undertake formulation, filling and secondary packaging of the vaccine for supply to J&J at its plant in the Eastern Cape.
Aspen, however, would have no say over where the final product ended up or was rolled out.
Speaking to Sunday Times Daily, Dr Stavros Nicolaou said: “Despite the temporary pause in Leiden, Aspen is still receiving drug substance from Leiden. We’ve had no interruptions in supply and notwithstanding the circumstances changing, we have a guarantee of supply from them.”
But more importantly, Aspen will soon be making its own clone of J&J, at which point, even if supply did dry up from Leiden, SA would be batting for Africa by having a local supply made from scratch.
Said Nicolaou: “In parallel to contract manufacturing, we are gearing up for our own clone of the J&J. We will be producing an African vaccine for Africa at our facilities. It will be called Aspenovax and should be ready during the second quarter of this year, and though it will be just like the J&J, it will be distinguished from it with an Aspenovax label.”
He added: “Regarding the current product that we finish and fill at our facility, we have no say over where it goes once ready.”
But now, under the licence agreement, “J&J has given Aspen the rights to their intellectual property including any data, formulation, copyright and so on — it is thus a de facto clone of the J&J vaccine.”
Others countries will be less lucky in withstanding the J&J pause.
According to the New York Times, “over the next several months, the interruption has the potential to reduce the supply of J&J vaccine by a few hundred million doses”.
A source told the New York Times that other facilities were being seconded to carry on with production but that many of these were not even “up and running” yet, or had not received “regulatory approval” to date for the production process.
Dr Ayoade Alakija, co-head of the AU’s vaccine delivery programme, was quoted in the US publication: “This is not the time to be switching production lines of anything when the lives of people across the developing world hang in the balance.”
Jake Sargent, speaking on behalf of J&J, told the New York Times the company “had millions of finished doses in inventory” but did not deny that production was paused to pursue another vaccine.
