Nearly 11 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — about half of the 21.4 million doses that have been delivered to states and other jurisdictions — have not been administered, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of those doses may be set to expire soon.
Most states have administered fewer than half of the J&J doses that they’ve received, CDC data shows.
Three states — California, Texas and Florida — account for more than a quarter of the unused doses. These states also received the most J&J doses overall, as the federal government allocated vaccine shipments based on state population.
While their total counts of unused doses are smaller, West Virginia and Mississippi – as well as the Veterans Health Administration and Indian Health Service – have each administered fewer than a third of the J&J doses that they’ve received, according to CDC data.
The J&J vaccine can be stored for up to three months if refrigerated and even longer if kept frozen, so not all of the unused doses are set to expire.
Ohio has about 256,000 unused doses of J&J vaccine, according to CDC data reported through Tuesday. In a news release from this week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said that 200,000 of those doses are set to expire before the end of the month.
CDC data shows Oklahoma has about 135,000 unused doses, and the state department of health deputy commissioner, Keith Reed, told CNN that last week they had about 80,000 doses that would expire if not used by the end of the month.
In the US overall, there are about three times as many unused doses of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccine – about 33.5 million doses of unused Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and about 27.5 million doses of unused Moderna vaccine. But those doses account for a much smaller share — about 17% — of the total doses delivered from these manufacturers, CDC data shows.
And as demand for any Covid-19 vaccine wanes across the country, the J&J vaccine has fallen particularly out of favor.
Every state has administered a smaller share of its J&J supply than its Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccine supply, with Maine as the one exception.
In fact, just about 4 million people in the US have been vaccinated with the J&J vaccine in the 46 days since the Food and Drug Administration lifted the pause to investigate reports of a rare blood clot after vaccination. About twice as many people received the J&J vaccine in the first 45 days after it was originally authorized for emergency use.
Overall, about 11 million people have been vaccinated with the J&J shot, about 8% of the more than 140 million people in the US who are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
