NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) – As millions continue to wait their turn for the COVID-19 vaccine, small but steady amounts of precious doses have spread across the country.
It is a heartbreaking reality, which experts have acknowledged is likely to occur. Thousands of photos have been wasted in Tennessee, Florida, Ohio and many other states. The reasons range from keeping records to accidentally throwing away hundreds of photos. However, the exact number of life-saving vials discarded remains largely unknown, despite the assurance of many local officials that the number remains low.
Of course, waste is common in global inoculation campaigns, with millions of doses of flu vaccines thrown away every year. According to an estimate by the World Health Organization, up to half of previous vaccines in previous campaigns worldwide have been discarded. because they have been mistreated, unclaimed or expired.
By comparison, the waste of the COVID-19 vaccine appears to be quite small, although the US government has not yet released numbers that cast information about its extent. Officials promised that it could change soon with more data being collected from states.
Meanwhile, state health agencies are more inclined to announce how quickly they have administered the photos, while keeping the mother on the number of doses that end up in the trash.
The Ohio Department of Health opposed the use of the term “wasted” when requested by the Associated Press for a total number of discarded doses. Instead, a spokesman for the agency said the state is pursuing “unusable” vaccines reported by state providers.
“With 3.2 million doses administered as of March 9, 2021, the 3,396 unusable doses reported by state providers represent approximately 0.1% of the doses administered – less than the CDC’s expectations of 5% of the unusable doses,” Alicia Shoults , an Ohio Department of Health spokesman said in an email.
According to a log sheet provided by the department, Ohio suppliers reported nearly 60 incidents in which doses were not used. The biggest incident occurred earlier this year, when a pharmacy responsible for distributing the vaccine to nursing homes failed to document storage temperatures for the remaining vaccines, resulting in the loss of 890 doses.
In Tennessee, wasted, altered or unused doses are not publicly disclosed on the online dashboard of the state’s COVID-19 vaccine. However, after nearly 4,500 doses in Tennessee were destroyed in February, the state Department of Health rushed to find answers.
It began with nearly 1,000 reported missing doses in Knox County in eastern Tennessee, where local emotional leaders told reporters that a shipment had been accidentally thrown by an employee who believed the box contained dry ice.
In a short time, they reportedly exceeded just over 2,500 wasted doses in Shelby County – which includes Memphis. A state investigation concluded that open eye damage occurred as a result of several incidents due to improper pharmaceutical practices, lack of standard operating procedures for storage and handling, disorganized record keeping and poor management of vaccine doses that will soon expire. .
A thousand separate doses were then reported broken in Tennessee after a school district reported a storage error.
Despite the recent series of wasted vaccine incidents, the health agency pointed out that the number represents only a fraction of the nearly 1.9 million doses the state has received since December.
“We do not believe there is a systemic problem at the state level, but we are stepping up our efforts to comply just to be sure,” State Commissioner Lisa Piercey told reporters earlier this month.
Piercey said Tennessee will soon review the state’s vaccine distribution efforts to prevent future waste, and will eventually hire a separate company to conduct quality checks.
Meanwhile, in Florida, surgeon general Dr. Scott Rivkees recently requested an audit after more than 1,000 doses of the vaccine were reported damaged last month in Palm Beach County. When asked to review the audit, the state said this week that it would provide those documents through a request for public records – which it was still preparing.
Like other states, Florida does not regularly publish how many doses do not end up in the arms, but a State Department health spokesman said 4,435 doses have been reported wasted since Monday.
In Louisiana, health officials give reporters updated totals of wasted doses at the governor’s weekly COVID-19 meeting. Of the 1.2 million doses of vaccine administered to date, less than 1,500 have been wasted since Tuesday, said Dr. Joe Kanter, the governor’s chief public health adviser.
The Ohio Department of Health has reported 2,349 wasted or altered doses since February. Officials point out that the amount wasted is extremely small compared to the total doses they received. However, he notes, this does not make the situation less troublesome.
“The bottom line is this is golden,” said Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. “I think every vaccine that touches a bottle of Pfizer, Moderna or J&J knows that. … I’ve talked to people about this wasted vaccine and I’m heartbroken. ”
The federal government has also dropped a number of altered or unusable doses, although it says states should report such waste to its vaccine tracker.
“We are working to find out how to provide this data online in the future, when the data is more complete,” said Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Associated Press writers Adrian Sainz of Memphis, Tennessee, Scott Bauer of Madison, Wisconsin, Melinda Deslatte of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Andrew Welsh-Higgins of Columbus, Ohio, contributed to the report.