Employees work in a laboratory at Emergent Biosolutions in Baltimore, Maryland on February 8, 2021.
Michael Robinson Chavez | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Some employees at the Emergent BioSolutions plant in Baltimore were unable to shower or change clothes, which is required to work at the factory and which likely helped ruin millions of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 cans. This emerges from a memo released Wednesday by a Key House Committee.
Inspections of the Bayview facility carried out last year also revealed mold problems, poor disinfection of facility equipment and inadequate staff training, employees of the selected coronavirus crisis subcommittee said in the memo. The committee will hold a hearing at 10:30 am ET to examine the role of the biopharmaceutical company in the destruction of the J&J recordings.
Although inspectors found poor conditions at the plant, top executives received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses last year and were commended for their leadership by the company’s board of directors. This is evident from other documents published by the committee.
According to one document, aspiring CEO Robert Kramer received a bonus of $ 1.2 million last year, while three other executives received payments of more than $ 400,000.
The hearing comes more than a month after the Biden government hired J&J to run the Baltimore plant after US officials learned that Emergent, a federal company that made vaccines for J&J and AstraZeneca who mixed the ingredients for the two shots.
An inspection by the Food and Drug Administration later revealed that the facility was unsanitary and unsuitable for making the shots. In a 13-page report, the inspectors wrote that the facility used to manufacture the vaccine “was not kept in a clean and sanitary condition” and “was not of the appropriate size, design and location for cleaning, maintenance and to facilitate proper operation. “”
FDA inspectors said paint was peeling in multiple places and walls were damaged, which could affect the facility’s “ability to adequately clean and disinfect.” They also found that when handling waste or materials used to make vaccines, employees did not follow standard operating procedures to ensure they were not contaminated.
The facility has not been approved by the FDA to manufacture or distribute Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, and none of the doses manufactured at this facility have been marketed for use in the United States. Emergent has agreed to cease production of materials until the issues identified by the FDA are resolved.
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