Emer­gent reshuf­fles its man­u­fac­tur­ing brain trust as CEO sends mixed mes­sages around Covid-19 vac­cine de­ba­cle

Weeks af­ter Mary­land-based Emer­gent BioSo­lu­tions bun­gled 15 mil­lion dos­es of J&J’s Covid-19 shot and was shut out of its own Bal­ti­more fa­cil­i­ty, the CD­MO is set on shak­ing up its man­u­fac­tur­ing lead­er­ship. Star­ing at a big fi­nan­cial hit from the or­deal, though, Emer­gent still can’t get its sto­ry straight on ex­act­ly what went down with J&J’s shots.

In an earn­ings call with in­vestors Thurs­day, CEO Bob Kramer said a “cross-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion” mix-up of the ade­n­ovirus vec­tors used in the J&J and As­traZeneca shots pro­duced on site was to blame for the J&J shots be­ing thrown out. But that’s not the sto­ry he gave the pub­lic ear­li­er this month. In an in­ter­view with CN­BC on April 1, Kramer said an in­gre­di­ents mix-up wasn’t the is­sue but rather that J&J’s shot batch was sim­ply man­u­fac­tured out-of-spec — which has very dif­fer­ent im­pli­ca­tions in terms of the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to do its job well.

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