COVID-19 vaccine waste growing

Governments, drugmakers and vaccination sites are discarding tens of millions of unused COVID-19 vaccine doses in developed countries, leading to massive wastage, according to The Wall Street Journal.

About 30 million doses of its COVID-19 shot were discarded recently by vaccine manufacturer Moderna Inc, while about 3.9 million were tossed by Germany's health officials, 1.2 million by Canada, which is also going to trash 13.6 million expired doses of AstraZeneca PLC's vaccine, the article said.

However, access to doses is not sufficient in some low-income countries. Reasons include a lack of healthcare infrastructure to handle and store the shots at low temperatures and having difficulty planning and rolling out vaccination campaigns due to supply problems, the author said.

"We are now throwing doses in the garbage," Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in May. "It's sad to say."

About 90.6 million doses have been wasted in the US, accounting for 11.9 percent of the doses delivered since the shots became available in late 2020, and the wastage rate has accelerated recently. Some 12 million discarded doses have been thrown out since late May.

"Wastage has risen as the number of doses you're giving out per day goes down, as demand goes down," said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, whose members lead vaccination programs in US states and some large cities.