Johnson & Johnson vaccine allocation to drop more than 80% next week

SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras says their goal was to vaccinate as many SUNY students as possible with the Johnson & Johnson shot before summer break. Now they have to consider other options.

News 12 Staff

Apr 10, 2021, 12:24 AM

Updated 1,281 days ago

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The CDC announced that next week Johnson & Johnson's vaccine allocation will plummet nearly 86% nationwide.
SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras says their goal was to vaccinate as many SUNY students as possible with the Johnson & Johnson shot before summer break. Now they have to consider other options.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says New York will only be getting about 35,000 Johnson & Johnson shots next week - an 88% drop week over week.
About a week ago, 15 million J&J doses had to be thrown away because a key ingredient did not meet a quality check.
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A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson says they're working with the FDA to get approval to make their vaccine in the Baltimore plant where that happened and they expect to deliver nearly 100 million doses by the end of May.
Malatras says SUNY schools have received 21,000 doses, but those appointments have already filled up and they have hundreds of thousands of students to vaccinate.
He says they prefer the single-dose vaccine because it is one and done, but Malatras says if Johnson & Johnson is unable to right the ship quick enough, they will have to switch gears and ask for allocations of Pfizer or Moderna.
"We'll adjust, we'll reschedule our students to make sure they get the first dose and the second dose before they go home. So we're going to be as flexible as possible because job No. 1, and what our students want, is to get vaccinated before they go," said Malatras.
From a county standpoint, most mass vaccination sites and county-run sites are administering the Pfizer and Moderna shots. This setback will primarily affect getting homebound or pharmacy appointments.