Moderna did not immediately reply to Reuters’ requests for comment on whether other countries are impacted by the issue.
South Korea, which imports the Moderna vaccine from production sites in the United States and Spain, said the vaccine lot that had the contamination issue was not shipped to the country.
Japan’s defence ministry, which operates a mass vaccination site in Osaka, said shots from the lot in question, which contains 565,400 doses, had been used in the western prefecture between Aug. 6 and Aug. 20, but it did not say how many people were affected.
Japanese carrier ANA (9202.T) said about 4,700 shots of the halted Moderna lot had been used and it would stop all vaccinations planned on Thursday.
Its rival Japan Airlines (9201.T) also cancelled some COVID-19 vaccinations for its employees on Thursday after receiving Moderna vaccines with particulate matter.
Despite several companies cancelling planned vaccinations, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the country’s inoculation plan would be little affected by the issue.
A day earlier, he said about 60% of the public would be fully vaccinated by the end of September and the country had enough vaccines to provide booster doses. read more
The decision to suspend use of the Moderna shots comes at awkward time for Suga, whose government was criticised over a slow roll out in the vaccine campaign earlier in the year. He now faces challenges in a party leadership race and his approval ratings have sunk below 30%.
Japan is battling its worst wave of infections, driven by the Delta variant, with new daily infections exceeding 25,000 for the first time this month. It has inoculated 54% of its population with at least one dose and fully vaccinated 43%, according to a Reuters vaccine tracker.