South African firm says it may close its COVID vaccine plant

By ANDREW MELDRUM and MARIA CHENG
Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The first factory to produce COVID-19 vaccines in Africa has announced that it has not received enough orders and is planning to stop production within a few weeks, in what a senior World Health Organization official described as a “failure” in efforts to achieve vaccine equity. South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare said that it cannot let its large-scale sterile manufacturing facilities sit idle and will return to making anesthetics. At the outset of the COVID pandemic, the company shifted its production and achieved capacity to produce more than 200 million doses annually of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.