photo by: August Rudisell/Special to the Journal-World

Vehicles line up at the Douglas County Fairgrounds, where residents were receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, on Friday, Jan. 29, 2020, in Lawrence, Kan.

Douglas County will receive replacement Johnson & Johnson vaccines after a faulty transfer led to nearly 600 doses being wasted, the health department announced Friday afternoon.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said it would be able to send Douglas County 600 replacement Johnson & Johnson doses for next week, according to a statement from Dan Partridge, director of Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health. Thursday night, LMH Health announced that 570 of the 900 Johnson & Johnson doses the county received this week had been wasted due to a faulty transfer of the doses between Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health and LMH Health. The error resulted in LMH refreezing doses that had already been thawed, rendering them unusable.

Partridge said in the statement that the health department was grateful for KDHE’s understanding and assistance “as we continue to vaccinate as many eligible people in Douglas County as efficiently and quickly as we can.”