• Has the countdown started for the AstraZeneca vaccine? 

  • Natacha Bouchart, LR mayor of Calais (Pas-de-Calais) and vice-president of the Hauts-de-France region, was worried about the approaching expiration date of the vials of this vaccine in her region.

  • If these expire at the end of May, the last doses received in the rest of the territory can be used until July 2021.

Does the public's reluctance to the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 - the cause of rare cases of thrombosis - risk causing a wastage of doses due to their approaching expiry date?

The question was raised at the local level this week by Natacha Bouchart, mayor Les Républicains (LR) of Calais (Pas-de-Calais) and vice-president of the Hauts-de-France region, during a passage on Cnews: “We can see that the discomfort [vis-à-vis AstraZeneca] is very present.

These 1,000 doses, we drain them little by little, every day, in doses of 30, 40, 50 to avoid reaching this date when we can no longer consume them, which is at the end of May.

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AstraZeneca: “The discomfort is very present.

These 1,000 doses are being dispensed with little by little, (...) to avoid reaching this date after which we will no longer be able to consume them, around the end of May ”, testifies Natacha Bouchart, in #LaMatinale pic.twitter .com / hAD7z7mkrk

- CNEWS (@CNEWS) April 22, 2021

A finding shared with BFMTV by Grégory Tempremant, head of the Regional Union of Health Professionals (URPS) -pharmacists Hauts-de-France: “Some pharmacists [in hospitals] told me that they had stocks that were out of date. next month, so there is an emergency.

It's pragmatism.

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But does this risk also exist at the national level?

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, François Martial, president of the national conference of URPS-pharmacists, explains the usual delivery time for a vial of AstraZeneca vaccine: "You have to count the time it is put on the market by through Europe, ordered by Public Health France and that it arrives in our pharmacies ... Today, the vaccines that we receive in April expire in July 2021. "

“The Hauts-de-France vaccines which expire in May must have been received in February.

It is possible that there was a lot or a box that has gone a little longer without being used in Hauts-de-France and that its expiration date is approaching.

It is not impossible, but it would surprise me given the tensions on stocks.

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For his part, Doctor Philippe Arramon-Tucoo, president of the national URPS-liberal doctors conference, has not encountered this problem of the expiry date in May either “nor in [his] region [Nouvelle-Aquitaine]. nor at the national level ”.

“About ten days ago, there were around 30,000 doses distributed but not yet injected, which is not shocking.

It is to be hoped that the vaccines received in April will be sold out by July.

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A "precise inventory" requested from vaccine storage locations

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, the Directorate General of Health (DGS) recalls that, as indicated by the regional health agency (ARS) of Hauts-de-France, it was requested "at each place of vaccine storage AstraZeneca to carry out a precise inventory of the expiration dates of the doses and to identify those which would expire in the coming weeks.

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“The objective of the ARS is to be able to reallocate to city professionals doses that would not be used in the vaccination center.

After an exchange with the Ministry of Health and then with the regional committee for citizen consultation on anti-Covid vaccination [...], a priority deployment of these doses - mainly to community pharmacies, to respect the quality of the pharmaceutical circuit - will be set up from next week, so that no dose is lost, ”concludes the DGS.

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