At a hospital in a COVID-19 hot spot, a vaccination team inoculated employees. Most employees had already been inoculated. An ER doctor suggested the remaining doses be administered to vulnerable patients or non-hospital employees. The policy however was clear, the shots could only be given to hospital employees. The ER doctor pleaded with upper management and they ultimately relented.
However the vaccination team had gone off shift and the remaining doses had been thrown out. “This kind of thing is pretty rampant,” Ashish K. Jha said. “I have personally heard stories like this from dozens of physician friends in a variety of different states. Hundreds, if not thousands, of doses are getting tossed across the country every day. It’s unbelievable.”
Covid-19 vaccines have a short shelf life once they are thawed out for use. Because of federal and state mandates, hospitals and other health care providers would rather risk a dose going bad than give it to somebody who isn’t scheduled to get a shot. Some states like Massachusetts now have rules requiring hospitals to report the number of vaccine doses that have been discarded, Jha said.
While there doesn’t appear to be any solid numbers yet of how many of the Covid-19 vaccines have been discarded in the United States since the rollout began last month, the World Health Organization warned in 2005 that up to 50 percent of the vaccines released globally each year end up in the dumpster because of supply chain problems, such as not having enough freezer space or transportation issues. Vaccine doses are being thrown out by medical providers who couldn’t find the precisely correct recipients under rigid applicability tiers fashioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Of the 31.2 million doses distributed as of Friday morning, only 12.3 million had been administered. President elect Joe Biden has promised 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days. Guidance from the CDC may have been a bit too rigid, Dr. Anthony Fauci said during a webcast hosted by Schmidt Futures and Social Science Research Council. The CDC recommended giving the very first vaccines to front line health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. While the priorities won’t be abandoned, “when people are ready to get vaccinated, we’re going to move right on to the next level, so that there are not vaccine doses that are sitting in a freezer or refrigerator where they could be getting into people’s arms,” Fauci said. Flexibility and less waste is needed moving forward.