Aspen Pharmacare (APNJ.J) of South Africa will begin supplying the first batch of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine to the country on July 26.
It will be the first batch of vaccinations produced in the country using active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) obtained from Europe, according to Aspen. API are the components required to construct the final medication product.
South Africa’s vaccination program hit a snag in April when the US Food and Drug Administration halted manufacture of J&J vaccines at an Emergent Biosolutions Inc (EBS.N) factory in Baltimore after it was discovered to be tainted.
Aspen, which was hired by J&J to ‘fill and complete’ the vaccinations in South Africa, had been sourcing APIs from the Baltimore factory and had been ordered to discard 2 million doses as a result of the FDA’s findings.
The supplies will be sent to other African countries as part of the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, which J&J has agreed to furnish.
Africa’s reliance on imported COVID-19 vaccine has made it vulnerable to coronavirus outbreaks, driving up demand for vaccine manufacturing facilities on the continent.
Due to constraints on shipping from vaccine-producing countries, it has only provided 60 million vaccine doses to a population of 1.3 billion people.