Japan has not registered for the moment any health problems in patients inoculated with Moderna’s vaccine and that are related to the contamination detected in a batch of doses from Spain, as reported by the Ministry of Health. Rovi, in charge of packaging these doses, fell 13.4% on Thursday on the stock market, but in this Friday’s session it bounces around 4%.
The Japanese authorities affirmed this Friday that they continue to investigate the causes of the presence of impurities observed in 39 vials of Moderna’s vaccine, which led the day before to block 1.63 million doses that were going to be used or had been already inoculated to some patients.
A contaminant found in a batch of Moderna vaccines is believed to be a metallic particle, Japanese public television NHK reported, citing sources from the Japanese Ministry of Health.
The Japanese Minister of Health, Norihisa Tamura, today asked both Moderna and the Japanese pharmaceutical company that distributes its vaccines in Japan, Takeda, to “take measures so that it does not happen again and to find the cause soon”, with a view to ” avoid the concern of people who get vaccinated. “
Sources from the same Ministry told Efe that Japan plans to continue counting on Moderna’s supplies from Spain, the main supplier of the American pharmaceutical vaccine in the Asian country, while the investigation into the contaminated vials is being carried out.
Japan decided to block the 1.63 million vaccines corresponding to three batches produced in Spain by the pharmaceutical company Rovi, responsible for the manufacture of a large part of Moderna’s vaccines in the international market, and which is also investigating the causes of these quality problems.
The detection of anomalous particles affects a batch of the product “distributed exclusively in Japan,” Rovi said yesterday in a statement addressed to the National Securities Market Commission.
“The origin of the incidence in manufacturing could be in one of Rovi’s production lines that is working to provide all the information and collaboration that allows progress in the investigation,” the company explained.
Most of the blocked batches had already been distributed in mass vaccination centers in Japan, companies and other agencies in charge of inoculation, and a part of the vaccines had already been used in patients, according to the Japanese authorities, who have not given specific data on how many people would have received vaccines from the blocked games.
The Japanese authorities are keeping the batches in question for now pending the results of the investigation, to determine if they could be used or if they would carry any health risk.
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