Thread by @jonworth

Something really does not add up with the Johnson & Johnson 💉 supply numbers EU-US

But where is the error?

A 🧵 to get to the bottom of it - comments and stats in the replies very welcome!

Here are the CDC's numbers for the USA

8m doses administered
17.6m doses delivered (so 9.6m delivered and not administered)

Source: covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…

On 28 February this NY Times piece by @SharonLNYT:
"The initial 3.9 million [J&J] doses were manufactured at its factory in the Netherlands; officials have said the rest of the doses were expected to come from its Baltimore plant." (that's Emergent)

nytimes.com/2021/02/28/wor…

That would match what was known EU side at the time - just under 1m doses have gone from EU to US since the Transparency Mechanism was introduced 31 January (and then just under 3m before 31 Jan)

Commission explained to Dave Keating:

https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1381565305906954242

Then the Emergent plant in Baltimore was hit by a series of problems...

And then Spiegel journalist @ClausHecking directs me to this piece by The Street that states
"no vaccine manufactured at the plant [Emergent] has been distributed for use in the U.S."

thestreet.com/investing/emer…

But then back to the CDC stats...

8m doses administered
17.6m doses delivered (so 9.6m delivered and not administered)

Even if that 9.6m is from Emergent (and hence cannot be used), that *still* leaves an unexplained shortfall of 4m doses

In other words: we *know* just under 4m doses went from the EU to the US from the @SharonLNYT piece, and we know 8m were administered, so where did the rest come from?

There are a few plausible explanations...

1) The NY Times story somehow has the wrong statistic, and exports from EU are much higher than thought - *but* all these exports were pre-31 Jan - but is >7m exported pre-31 Jan conceivable?

2) There have been more exports since 31 Jan than the Commission was aware of, but as all exports are covered by the mechanism is this possible? Even export of ingredients. The mechanism isn't just for finished vaccine...

3) J&J has somehow been using doses from the Emergent plant before the problems were found there, and The Street is wrong about no doses from there being used

4) There's manufacturing somewhere other than Baltimore and Leiden

At the very least we need some more data to clear all this up. @ThierryBreton what do you say? @DaveKeating @FaktaShake @bill_emmott @BioHJM @jwildeboer @danieldschade @Semyaza666 @arekmakarenko @vramosbis @kmlvrmln wdyt?

/ends

First plausible answer is from @el_snoop - that these extra doses come from Catalent in Indiana fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/…