Aspen Promises to Speed Up Production of Johnson & Johnson Vaccines
- Pharmaceutical giant Aspen recently promised that they would speed up the production of Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines as South Africa battles with vaccine rollouts
- Their promises come after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country was pulling two million vaccines following concerns of contamination
- Ramaphosa also announced that he and the President of the US, Joe Biden, were having talks about the US donating some vaccines to South Africa
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Aspen, the producers of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, have promised President Cyril Ramaphosa that they will be making provision for faster production of the vaccine.
Covid cases on the rise
Their promise to "beef up" production comes as the country faces a rise in Covid-19 cases and a shortage of Covid-19 vaccines. Ramaphosa earlier announced that two million vaccines would be pulled over fears of contamination that occurred in a US production site.
Source: UGC
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The announcement came after health experts called on the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority to verify whether the vaccines were okay for use, News24 reports.
Biden makes a promise
EWN reported that the President of the United States, Joe Biden, has revealed that the country will be donating vaccines to South Africa, Ramaphosa announced this during a G7 meeting that recently took place in the United Kingdom.
Other Covid-19 reports
Briefly News also reported that in a single day, South Africa registered approximately 7 600 new Covid-19 infections. More than 60% of the new infections have occurred in Gauteng, bringing the total number of active cases in South Africa to almost 82 000.
Another 59 people have died, bringing the total number of deaths to almost 57 700. In the meantime, 44,560 tests were completed in less than 24 hours, according to a report by eNCA.
"The majority of new cases are from the Gauteng province (64%), followed by the Western Cape (9%) and North West (7%) provinces," said NICD spokesperson Sinenhlanhla Jimoh.
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Source: Briefly News
