At least 15 million doses of vaccines against VOC-19 have been discarded in the United States since March 1, the NBC medium announced on Wednesday, citing information obtained from the health authorities of that country.
The number of doses wasted was reported by the States or pharmacies that administer vaccines to the centers for the control and prevention of diseases (CDC), the main Federal Public Health Agency of the country.
It is probably a subregister, since several federal states or agencies are missing in the data.
Reasons for throwing doses can be various: expiration date, dilution error, cooling problems, frying bottles … as a bottle contains several doses, once opened, the other doses should be used in the hours that follow, or
Be discarded for lack of use.
While some suppliers realized thousands of doses shot in one case, the most common signs are only four doses discarded at a time, according to NBC.
Two chains of national pharmacies, Walgreens and CVS reported more than two million doses wasted each, and Walmart and Rite Aide, more than one million.
According to previous data delivered by the CDC, between the start of the US vaccination campaign in December 2020 and March, only about 200,000 doses had been wasted.
About 15 million pulled later, most of them were during the summer months (June to August), NBC score.
This figure represents a small fraction of the number of doses distributed in total in the country since December (around 444 million), as well as the number of doses effectively administered (371 million).
But vaccination is still very unequal in the world and the race to obtain a reality is a reality, since several countries have not been able to immunize more than a small part of their population, especially in Africa.
“It’s a problem of equity,” said NBC Tim Doran, professor in public health at the University of New York.
“There are very rich countries that access vaccines and simply pull dose.”
The United States announced at the beginning of August 110 million dose of vaccine, and began distributing at the end of August a part of the donation of 500 million dose of Pfizer promised to poor countries.
