Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) (J&J) has temporarily halted production of Covid vaccines at a plant in Europe, according to reports overnight.
The Dutch plant should be producing vaccines again in a few months, the report in the New York Times said, but currently the facility was making a new vaccine against a different virus.
J&J has forecast revenues of US $3.5bn from its Covid jab in 2022, a 46% rise on 2021, but still well behind the numbers being generated by rivals Pfizer and Moderna reflecting its late arrival, manufacturing issues and safety concerns.
Originally it was meant to be a one-shot treatment, and be cheaper and easier to store and distribute, but studies have indicated that administered as a two-shot jab it is more effective against the virus.
The switch of production at the Leiden plant in the Netherlands might reduce the supply of the J&J vaccine by a few hundred million doses, said the report with other manufacturing facilities not ready yet to pick up the slack.
Major customers for the vaccine including the African Union and Covax, the organisation focused on supplying vaccines equally around the world, said they had not been aware of the change in production at the Dutch plant.
A spokesman for J&J told the NYT the company was continuing to deliver batches of the vaccine to facilities that bottled and packaged doses and had millions of finished doses in inventory.