Injections of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine stopped across much of the U.S. on Tuesday, after federal health officials called for a pause in the use of the vaccine, leaving the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines as the remaining inoculation options.

Taken at face value, there should be enough doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to go around. There is “more than enough supply to continue the current pace of vaccinations of 3 million shots per day,” according to a White House statement.

But it’s not that straightforward, says Nada Sanders, distinguished professor of supply chain management at Northeastern.

“We’re putting really all our eggs in the basket of Pfizer and Moderna,” Sanders says. “We’re now dependent on Pfizer and Moderna, and that nothing goes wrong, in order to stay on track.”

And in supply chains, “something always goes wrong,” she says. The vaccine rollouts have already seen storms causing delays, a refrigerator being unplugged by accident, and manufacturing mistakes causing a massive batch of doses to be thrown out. So Sanders says more buffer will now need to be built into the manufacturing, logistics, delivery, distribution, and vaccine administering systems for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

 

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