MANILA, Philippines – Lawmakers have sounded the alarm about millions of expired COVID-19 vaccines, believed to be worth billions of pesos, as they call for an investigation into waste in each and every room.
The Ministry of Health said Tuesday (Aug. 9) that of the 245 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines the Philippines received through donations or purchases, 6. 6 percent, or about 16. 1 million doses. The DOH maintained that it is still within the World Health Organization’s 10% standard.
The DOH did disclose the estimated costs and brought up confidential agreements with the manufacturers.
Vaccine waste is a common phenomenon that also occurs with other vaccination campaigns. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) has established that countries aim for a maximum loss rate of 25% in the first year, with slow relief to 15% in the 3rd year.
There are two types of waste: closed bottle and open bottle. The waste of closed vials is due to inefficient temperature and disorders with the management of garages and shipments.
Waste of open vials, on the other hand, occurs when gym staff throw away unused doses from multi-dose vials. doses are used within hours or discarded.
Vaccine waste has occurred in other parts of the world, at other levels. How have other countries minimized waste or controlled expired doses well?
In May 2021, Alberta Health Services (AHS) in Canada reported that 0. 2% of doses administered at that time were wasted.
In particular, the AHS has kept this number low by allowing a safe excess of vaccination appointments to prepare for absences.
They also provided replacements that would be vaccinated in case the open vials still contained doses.
“All vaccination systems have some degree of unintentional vaccine waste due to disorders such as refrigeration errors, damaged vials, expirations, and missed appointments. It is expected and minimal,” the AHS said in January 2021, when it reported 0. 3% waste.
Meanwhile, in other parts of Canada like Nunavut, vaccines expired because other people lived far from each other and in other communities, and it was difficult for health workers to administer all doses in a single ampoule.
In an April 2022 study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, researchers said that the use of single-dose vials or prefilled syringes can only be used as an option for disposing of open vials in sparsely populated areas, such as Nunavut.
The United States, the country with the highest cumulative COVID-19 cases in the world, rejected at least 82. 1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from December 2020 to May 2022, according to an NBC News report.
The waste is due to a number of factors: expiration, deterioration by forced cuts and open vials that were discarded at the end of the day when they contained doses for which no one had come.
Ravi Anupindi, an operations professor at the University of Michigan, told NBC News that demand for COVID-19 vaccines has stalled or is declining, in a waste of open vials.
The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionU. S. consumers have the following tips to avoid wasting vaccines:
Israel has been praised for its immediate rollout of vaccines. More than 10% of the Israeli population obtained their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in the first two weeks of their national vaccination campaign, which began on December 20, 2020. Meanwhile, only less than 1% of the U. S. population. The U. S. was vaccinated.
During the deployment, vaccination of certain population teams, such as the elderly and those most at risk, was prioritized. Instead of waiting for all members of the existing precedence organization to be vaccinated before opening vaccination to a subset of the population, the Israeli authorities, in the first few months of the campaign, allowed other people in the next previous organization to get the vaccine when clinics had an excess of vaccines.
The government also worked with civil society organizations to inform the public if there were still vaccines to administer during the day.
Concerns have been raised about vaccine waste because Israel had more COVID-19 vaccines than other people it could vaccinate. Israel had already bought 17 million doses of AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines for the first few months of its campaign. Then, in March 2021, the Israeli government intended to buy 36 million doses of the vaccine, which would be enough to vaccinate another 30 million people, even though the country has a population of around 9. 4 million.
After political opposition, a final acquisition of 18 million doses was made. Israel’s acquisition of more vaccines, a move initiated by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of a national election, where he intended to be re-elected. Netanyahu’s government has prioritized stockpiling vaccines to have boosters in a position when they are needed.
There is also a preference for Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, as Israel agreed to share medical knowledge with Pfizer in exchange for more vaccines.
With its unused COVID-19 vaccines about to expire, Israel negotiated swap agreements with countries in dire need of vaccines. For example, Israel signed an agreement with South Korea in July 2021, when Israel sent 700,000 Pfizer vaccines that were about to expire. , in exchange for South Korea returning the same number of vaccines when it won its new batch orders.
Originally, the 700,000 vaccines delivered to South Korea, which will soon expire, were to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as part of a similar exchange agreement. In this agreement, Israel will hand over to the Palestinian Authority one million vaccines that would soon expire. in exchange for the Palestinian Authority giving the same number of doses of new vaccines, but the deal failed.
“It is highly doubtful that the Palestinian Authority will use all vaccines as they are about to expire,” Physicians for Human Rights Israel tweeted.
Around 4. 7 million or 4% of total doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the UK were wasted until the end of October 2021, according to a report by the Office of National Audit.
Vaccine losses were smaller than expected. It was predicted that 20% of the UK’s vaccine inventory would be wasted.
Like Israel, the UK sent its near-date vaccines to countries. Approximately 4. 5 million doses of AstraZeneca have been administered to countries. However, 1. 9 million doses of AstraZeneca have expired.
England’s National Health and Improvement Service “has published rules for vaccination sites to have a reserve list of patients and/or health and social care staff who can be called in the short term to get a vaccine to avoid waste. “
Like Israel and the UK, the Philippines announced in April its goal of donating its expired vaccines to Myanmar and Papua New Guinea – with reports via Jeromel dela Rosa Lara/Rappler. com