White House officials said Friday that states will receive substantially fewer doses of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine over the coming weeks, until the Food and Drug Administration can authorize the company's production facility in Baltimore.

"We expect a relatively low level of weekly doses distributed to states, tribes, territories and our federal channels" until the manufacturing facility is authorized, Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said Friday.

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Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that Johnson & Johnson doses sent out will drop from about 4.9 million this week to 700,000 next week, a cut of 85 percent.

The production boost this week was largely due to the FDA allowing contract manufacturer Catalent, which operates a "fill-finish" facility in Indiana, to ship millions of doses of the vaccine that had already been packaged and inspected.

Zients said officials expect a "messy fluctuation," and that he wouldn't speculate on timing of the Baltimore plant's authorization. He said Johnson & Johnson is working closely with the FDA to resolve manufacturing issues at the plant, which had been run by Emergent BioSolutions.

Zients said J&J has completely taken control of the facility, and has installed a new senior leadership team, after a quality control error at the plant resulted in the loss of 15 million doses. Read more at The Hill