Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday at noon plans to tour the the vaccination site at the La Colaborativa headquarters in Chelsea and provide an update on COVID-19 vaccinations.
Baker on Wednesday said Massachusetts is expecting more than 100,000 doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine next week.
“I can’t tell you how important that is,” Baker said.
Hours later, the company announced a batch of vaccine was spoiled by a manufacturing error, with media reports estimating that 15 million potential doses were lost.
The Baker administration late Wednesday said it did not expect any shipment delays “at this time.”
“At this time, the Administration has not received any notice of delay in shipment of J&J vaccine to the Commonwealth from the federal government, and this week received 383,000 doses as part of the state allocation from the federal government of Moderna, Pfizer and J&J doses,” Kate Reilly, a COVID-19 Command Center spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This news does not impact current appointments or allocations for any sites statewide and we remain prepared to work collaboratively with the federal government to avoid any disruption in vaccine shipments.”
Johnson & Johnson said its quality control process “identified one batch of drug substance that did not meet quality standards at Emergent Biosolutions, a site not yet authorized to manufacture drug substance for our COVID-19 vaccine. This batch was never advanced to the filling and finishing stages of our manufacturing process.”
The company said it was working with the federal Food and Drug Administration and Emergent toward the emergency use authorization of the Emergent Bayview Facility in Baltimore, and providing additional experts in manufacturing and operations to be on-site at Emergent for supervisory purposes.
The steps, Johnson & Johnson said, “will enable us to safely deliver an additional 24 million single-shot vaccine doses through April.”
Baker will be joined in Chelsea by Lt. Gov . Karyn Polito, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders, City Manager Thomas Ambrosino, East Boston Neighborhood Health Center CEO Manny Lopes and La Colaborativa Director Gladys Vega.
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