White House has largely written off J&J vaccine, Politico reports

While the Biden administration has stood by Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ) Covid-19 vaccine publicly, senior health officials have largely written off the shot privately, Politico reports, citing seven people with knowledge of the matter. If ongoing tests of remaining vaccine batches made by J&J’s contractor Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) reveal further contamination, it could take up to four months to replace those doses through manufacturing at alternate facilities, two people with direct knowledge of the situation told the website. The problems J&J has faced has disappointed the Biden team, who believe the company can’t be counted on for any significant production until regulators allow production to resume, according to two Politico sources.