BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany is due to receive the first small delivery of Johnson & Johnson’s single dose COVID-19 vaccine in mid-April, Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Saturday, giving the country a further shot to help speed up its sluggish rollout.

“It will only be a small delivery at first,” Spahn told an online event, adding he expected a shipment of around 275,000 doses in the week of April 12.

“But at least – because we have been waiting a long time for the first delivery from J&J – we will get the first deliveries of the vaccine in mid-April, and it will then be ramped up to millions of doses, as is the case with all deliveries.”

J&J’s shot, which was approved by European Union regulators on March 11, is the fourth to be endorsed for use in the EU after vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech,, AstraZeneca-Oxford University and Moderna.

After a sluggish start to its vaccine rollout, hampered by delivery delays and supply constraints, Germany hopes to ramp up vaccinations from next month when it expects to receive 15 million doses from the three other suppliers.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley, editing by Louise Heavens)

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