Following a thumbs up from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, company CEO — and Doylestown resident — Alex Gorsky thanked the general Bucks County community, writes Marion Callahan of the Bucks County Courier Times. 

Gorsky praised Bucks- and Montgomery-County front-line workers caring for patients. He recognized the area’s teachers whose return to classrooms, enabled his scientists and researchers to dig in diligently in onsite vaccine development. 

“This true sense of community provides a lot of security and a lot of support,” said Gorksy. 

J&J is working closely with Merck to boost supplies of its single-dose coronavirus vaccine, aiming for a billion-dose distribution by year-end 2021. 

Gorsky said the J&J collaboration with Merck — also with deep roots in Bucks and Montgomery counties — covers manufacture, production and packaging. “Never in our history have we dealt with a pandemic of this scope and scale, and there is no one company, no one country, that could completely solve such a challenging situation,” he commented. 

Read more about Gorsky’s vaccine breakthrough in the Bucks County Courier Times, here.