The U.S. company Johnson & Johnson has halted production of its coronavirus vaccine. At the end of 2021, the company closed the only plant that produced batches of the vaccine.
According to people familiar with the decision, the plant in the Dutch city of Leiden was producing an experimental but potentially more profitable drug to protect against another virus instead of a vaccine for the coronavirus.
The plant's suspension is temporary. After a pause of several months, the Leiden plant is expected to begin producing the COVID-19 vaccine again.
Over the next few months, however, the pause could cut Johnson & Johnson's supply of the vaccine by several hundred million doses, according to one person familiar with the decision.
Other facilities have been hired to produce the vaccine, but they have either not yet been launched or have not received regulatory approval to ship the drug they produce into bottles.
Johnson & Johnson's decision to suspend vaccine production caught officials at two of the company's most important customers by surprise: the African Union and COVAX.
"Now is not the time to switch production lines when lives are hanging in the balance across the developing world," said Dr. Ayoade Alakija, one of the heads of the African Union's vaccine delivery program.
Jake Sargent, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, responded in an e-mail that the company is "focused on making vaccine available where people need it," and that its global production network is "working day and night" to help fight the pandemic.
