COVID-19 vaccine wastage less than 10% –DOH

Only less than 10% of the total number of COVID-19 vaccines obtained by the government are considered wastage due to logistical issues, the Department of Health (DOH) said Monday. 

In a television interview, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire allayed concerns that millions of pesos worth of vaccines have already expired or are expiring.

“Right now, when we did our wall-to-wall inventories, we could see that only about less than 10% of what we have right now had been wasted and this is not because of expired vaccines, but because of the storage, the distribution, and other logistical issues,” she told ANC.

Presidential adviser for entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion III previously reported that about 27 million shots acquired by the government will expire in July if not used.

Vergeire said that they were able to get an approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to extend the shelf life of the vaccines that are about to expire.

“This is what we’re using right now and it is still safe and of quality because the Food and Drug Administration has extended the shelf life of these vaccines,” she said.

In a joint statement by the DOH and the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 on April 4, they said that only 2% of COVID-19 vaccines procured by the national government have become wastage and this was due to supply chain inefficiencies or errors in dose administration, among others.

This is less than the 10% indicative wastage rate used by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the planning and forecasting of vaccine supply needs, they said.

Based on the DOH’s latest data, at least  66.2 million Filipinos or about 74% of the government’s 90 million target population are already fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Meanwhile, some 12.2 million individuals have received their booster shots. —KBK, GMA News