Poorest nations are throwing out COVID vaccines that are about to end: UNICEF | Coronavirus pandemic News

More than 100 million doses of COVID vaccine were discarded in December, according to UNICEF officials, with 681 million doses delivered in about 90 countries.

The poorer nations rejected more than 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed by the global COVAX program last month, mainly because the expiration date was approaching, a UNICEF official said.

The picture shows the difficulties of vaccinating the world’s population, despite the growing supply of jab, COVAX is approaching one billion doses in almost 150 countries.

“More than 100 million have been scrapped in December alone,” Etleva Kadilli, director of the UNICEF’s supply agency division, told European Parliament lawmakers on Thursday.

The main reason for the refusal was to provide short-term doses, he said.

Even poorer nations have been forced to delay supply because they do not have adequate storage facilities, Kadilli said, including a lack of vaccine refrigerators.

UNICEF did not immediately respond to the total number of rejected doses so far.

In addition to discarded doses, many others remain unused in the poorest nation’s storage facilities.

Data on the supply and use of vaccines provided by UNICEF show that the 681 million doses currently sent are not used in the 90 poorest countries in the world, according to the charity CARE, which extracted data from a public database.

More than 30 poor nations, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and major states like Nigeria, have used less than half of the doses received so far, CARE said, citing UNICEF data.

COVAX, a global program run jointly by the World Health Organization, has so far delivered 989 million COVID-19 vaccines to 144 countries, according to data from the GAVI vaccine alliance that co-manages the program.

COVAX is the leading provider of doses to eleven poor nations, but it is not the only one. Some countries buy their own doses or use other programs to buy regional vaccines.

Supplies for the poorest nations have long been severely lacking in vaccines, as rich states have secured most of the doses initially available from December 2020 onwards.

But in the last quarter, shipments have increased exponentially thanks to donations from rich countries that have included a majority of the population.

In January, 67% of the population of the richest nations were fully vaccinated, and only 8% of the poorest countries received the first dose, according to WHO data.

The faster pace of supply caught up with many unprepared recipient countries.

“We have countries that are currently pushing for available doses towards the second quarter of 2022,” Kadilli said.

Of the 15 million EU doses that were denied, three-quarters were less than 10 weeks after AstraZeneca’s shots, according to a UNICEF slide shown to EU lawmakers.

Co-administration of rich countries with relatively short-lived vaccines has been a “big problem” for COVAX, a senior WHO official said last month, as many doses were wasted.

An estimated one million vaccines were lost in Nigeria in November unused.