J&J Covid Vaccine Supply to Start at 2 Million Doses, GAO Says

Johnson & Johnson will deliver about 2 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine when it receives an emergency use authorization in the U.S., according to a Government Accountability Officereport published Thursday.

The figure revealed in a footnote to the government audit is the clearest indication yet of the initial supply of J&J’s one-shot vaccine.

A spokesman for J&J said in an email that it expected to supply 100 million doses to the U.S. government in the first half of the year. He didn’t comment further on the GAO report.

The company was expected to have doses available in the single-digit millions by the second half of February, Moncef Slaoui, the top scientific adviser to the Trump administration’s vaccine development effort, saidearlier this month.

“We’re trying to make that number get as close to a double digit number as possible,” Slaoui said at a briefing at the time.

J&J is expected to report clinical-trial data on the experimental shot’s efficacy byearly next week, Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk told Bloomberg in aJan. 26 interview. The company aims to have seven manufacturing facilities running by the end of the second quarter to ramp up supply, Wolk said.

— With assistance by Drew Armstrong, and Jodi Schneider

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