While vaccination against Covid-19 remains very unequal in the world, especially in Africa or Southeast Asia, serums sometimes end up in the trash.

At least 15 million doses have been thrown away in the United States since March 1, according to the American media NBC Wednesday, citing information obtained from the American health authorities.

This number of wasted doses has been reported by US states or pharmacies that administer vaccines to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), the country's main federal public health agency.

Above all, it is probably underestimated, as several states or federal agencies are missing from this data.

The problem of vials with multiple doses

The reasons for throwing away doses can be various: expiry date passed, dilution error, refrigeration problems, cracked vials ... In addition, a vaccine vial containing several doses, once opened, the other doses must then be used in the next few hours and are therefore sometimes discarded for lack of finding a taker.

While some vendors have reported several thousand doses thrown away at once, the most common reports were of only four wasted doses at a time, according to NBC. Two national drugstore chains, Walgreens and CVS, reported over two million wasted doses each, and Walmart and Rite Aid, over one million.

According to previous data provided by health authorities, between the start of the US vaccination campaign in December 2020 and March, only around 200,000 doses had been wasted.

Of the 15 million thrown away, most were thrown away during the summer months (June to August), NBC notes.

This figure represents a small fraction of the total number of doses distributed in the country since December (nearly 444 million), as well as the number of doses actually administered (371 million).

The United States also announced in early August that it had sent foreign countries 110 million doses of vaccine, and began distributing in late August part of the donation of 500 million doses of Pfizer vaccine promised to poor countries.

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