The United States has wasted at least 15 million COVID-19 doses since March, new data show

According to government data obtained by NBC News, the United States has discarded at least 15.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine since March 1. This number is much higher than previously known and may still be underestimated.

According to data released Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to a request for public records, four national pharmacy chains each reported more than one million wasted doses. Walgreens reports that it was the most wasteful of all pharmacies, states, or other vaccine providers, with nearly 2.6 million wasted times. CVS reported 2.3 million wasted doses, Wal-Mart reported 1.6 million, and Rite Aid reported 1.1 million.

Data released by the CDC are self-reported by pharmacies, states, and other vaccine providers. This is not comprehensive and does not include the reason why some state and federal providers were missing and the dose had to be discarded. The number of discarded doses remains a small fraction of all vaccines administered in the United States.

In general, there are several reasons why a vaccination site should mark a dose as wasted. For example, vial cracks and vaccine dilution errors, freezer malfunctions, and overdose doses in vials. Disposal reports can also occur if the vial contains a lower dose than it should.

Data on wasted doses add new urgency to efforts to immunize as many people as possible as more contagious delta variants spread rapidly throughout the United States, boosting already vaccinated people. We are spurring plans to start offering shots. Many countries around the world do not vaccinate most of their residents.

Sharifah Sekalala, an associate professor of global health law at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, said: Infectious disease inequality.

“Much of the south of the world is unvaccinated. The African Continent is still below 10%. That’s a big inequality and it’s really a problem.”

CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said in an email that the rate of wasting COVID-19 vaccine “remains very low. This is the federal government, jurisdiction, to vaccinate as many people as possible while reducing vaccines. And evidence of a strong partnership between vaccine providers. Waste of the entire system. “

Nordland said: “

A CVS spokesman said in an email: “I regret having to dispose of the vaccine, but I’m very proud of the store employees who helped me with more than 30 million doses. It could save lives. Or, given the option to slightly improve the reported waste figures, we always choose the former. “

Walgreens, Walmart and Rite Aid did not immediately provide comments. “Our goal was to ensure that all doses of the vaccine were used at all times,” said Walgreens spokeswoman Chris Raysan. Told Kaiser Health News May.

The number of wasted doses Over 438 million doses As of Tuesday, it was distributed domestically 111.7 million additional doses The United States had given it to other countries as of August 3.

Vaccine demand in the United States Rise in august The number of cases and hospitalizations surged due to the delta variant. Still, data show that the United States wasted at least 3.8 million doses in August alone.

States, pharmacies, and other vaccine providers also reported at least 4.4 million wasted doses to the CDC in June and 4.7 million in July. This is higher than the sum for March, April and May.

No state health department approached the number of doses wasted by the pharmacy chain, but each reported more than 200,000 wasted doses. Texas led the state’s reporting of vaccine waste, with 517,746 wastes, 285,126 in North Carolina, 244,214 in Pennsylvania, and 226,163 in Oklahoma.

Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said the state “vaccinated vaccination providers, rather than waiting for enough people to use all the doses in the vials before opening the vials. I instructed the vaccinated person to give priority when receiving the vaccine. ”This can lead to wasted doses. Anton also mentioned extreme weather events in May as contributing to Texas waste numbers.

Representatives of the North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma Health Departments did not immediately comment.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration Approved booster shot For people who are immunocompromised because their bodies may not respond to the first vaccine therapy.Biden administration Announce planAwaiting FDA and CDC approval, we will provide booster shots to all Americans eight months after the last dose, depending on evidence of weakened immunity.

Those movements There has been a lot of debate about whether it is moral to provide additional protection to Americans, even though so many people around the world have never been vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine. rice field.

However, new data show that the United States is wasting far more vaccine doses than many poor countries have for the entire population. For example, the country of Georgia, Coronavirus hotspot, Just administered 1.1 million vaccinations For that population 4.9 million.. Nepal destroyed by the Delta variant 9.7 million Dose for that population 30.4 million..

“This is a matter of fairness,” said Tim Doran, a professor of health policy at the University of York in the United Kingdom. “You have a very wealthy country, have good access to vaccines, essentially throw away vaccines, throw away a lot of vaccines, and others who really needed it and had to wait. There are countries and other communities. Vaccines are not available and they are becoming more sensitive while waiting for vaccination. “

Secarara said the US wasting so much dose was only thinking that wealthy countries would buy large amounts of vaccines for themselves and later donate them to poorer ones. It is inevitable under the model. “

“This is a failure of the current system where rich countries have to buy individual batches of vaccines and think about what would happen if they didn’t use them,” she said. “This led to over-purchasing, and people bought supplies they didn’t need or couldn’t use.”

One of the causes of vaccine waste is the packaging of vaccines. Most vaccines for other diseases are in single-dose vials. However, depending on the equipment used to elicit the dose, Modern The COVID-19 vaccine can be given to vials up to 15 times. Pfizer Up to 6 Johnson & Johnsons There are up to five.

When the vial is punctured (for example, when a customer requests a vaccine at a retail pharmacy), the clock begins to tick. Moderna vaccine vials should be discarded 12 hours after drilling, while Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines should be discarded 6 hours later.

The high frequency of each vial and the relatively short duration of use of the vial after a puncture may have contributed to the waste of unused doses.

The data released on Tuesday is more detailed and complete than the data released by the CDC in April. Kaiser Health News Survey It was found that the country wasted about 200,000 COVID-19 vaccinations between December 2020 and March 2021.

NS Individual survey According to the New York Times, about 1 million wasted doses were found in 10 states from December to July.

More detailed data suggests that the CDC has a better understanding of how much wasted and where it was wasted than before the vaccination program. Still, the seven states of Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, Ohio, and Oregon are completely missing from the newly released data.

Another state, Michigan, has reported 12 wasted doses to the CDC since March 1.

Also, the CDC data does not include doses that are wasted by the federal agencies that administer the vaccine, such as the Department of Defense, the Prison Department, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Indian Health Service.

Tiberius, a system operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, stores more vaccine waste data, but authorities have not yet released it. The data released on Tuesday comes from the CDC’s Vaccine Tracking System (VTrckS) and is taken from state and local immune registries.

This story originally appeared NBCNews.com..

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