Who knew that trying to make sensitive medical products in Baltimore would prove to be a disaster?
Make a vaccine in a city whose mascot is a rat? What could possibly go wrong?
Some employees at the Emergent BioSolutions plant in Baltimore failed to shower or change clothes, which is required when working in the factory and it likely played a role in ruining millions of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 doses, according to a memo released Wednesday by a key House committee.
An inspection by the Food and Drug Administration later found the plant was unsanitary and unsuitable to manufacture the shots. In a 13-page report, inspectors wrote that the facility used to manufacture the vaccine was “not maintained in a clean and sanitary condition” and was “not of suitable size, design, and location to facilitate cleaning, maintenance, and proper operations.”
You might say they were filthy.
Here are some excerpts from the FDA report
Employees were observed “throwing unsealed bags of special medical waste into the service elevator” “carrying unsealed bags of special medical waste… contacting containers of staged manufacturing materials” and “compacting using their gloved hands unsealed bags of special medical waste”.
And “removing their outer protective garments onto the warehouse floor where raw materials were staged for manufacturing… and placing the garments in open garbage containers.”
There’s a lot more like that.
Plus there’s the “brown … and black residue” on the walls.
Now 60 million doses have been ruined. And President Trump was proven right again.