Aspen had told Reuters on Wednesday that its vaccine production capacity might go idle soon if it doesn't get orders.
"We as African CDC, the African Union, we do not want to see a situation where Aspen closes any of their manufacturing capacity to (produce) COVID-19 vaccines," Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, Acting Director of Africa CDC, told reporters.
"The thing here is that we don't know if we will get further orders from J&J. But we are finishing off production of what we've got," Stavros Nicolaou, group senior executive at Aspen, told Reuters.
Aspen could get some indication from J&J by September as to whether any new orders are in the pipeline, Nicolaou said. But he cautioned that those might not be enough.
Without new orders, Aspen would have to shut down all of its 450 million-dose annual production capacity, and convert production lines to manufacture anaesthetics, Nicolaou said.
"Then Africa loses its COVID vaccine capacity, the only one really that exists on the continent," he said. "Of course we cannot continue with vacant lines indefinitely. And we would have to get an order imminently."
The bulk of the company's COVID-19 production lines had been meant to produce Aspenovax for Africa. Its initial plans aimed to boost annual capacity to 700 million doses by February and a further expansion to one billion doses to meet expected demand.
Aspen currently produces vaccines for Johnson & Johnson. In March, it struck a deal to produce, price, and sell its own-brand version of the shot for African markets.
