Millions of vaccine doses threaten to expire in Austria
In Austria there is a risk of a large-scale expiry of the vaccination doses. This is based on calculations by the aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which are available exclusively to the APA. Even if all those who are required to be vaccinated receive their first, second or third stitch in the first quarter and there are many child vaccinations, according to current forecasts, 10.2 million doses will be in stock by the end of March, explained MSF expert Marcus Bachmann. Seven million cans are currently unused.
“That is such a dramatic excess that it becomes very clear that there is an urgent need for action,” emphasized the pharmaceutical expert. He pointed out that the vaccines have a short shelf life of six to nine months. Even if the “first in, first out” principle is consistently observed, things could very soon become “tight” in view of the expiry dates, warned Bachmann. The forecast for the first quarter also takes into account 750,000 doses of Novavax’s newly approved fifth Covid-19 vaccine.
It is difficult to pass on vaccination doses abroad. As Bachmann explained, the manufacturers have secured a right of veto, whereby Moderna in particular is very strict. Correspondingly, hundreds of thousands of Moderna cans in Austria could remain unused. Bachmann estimates that of the 3.3 million cans delivered, around half are still in warehouses. According to the data entered in the electronic vaccination card, only 1.4 million doses have been vaccinated so far.
However, Bachmann expects the biggest discrepancy at AstraZeneca. Austria received 5.2 million doses of the vaccine, which has hardly been used since the summer. 2.2 million cans were dispensed. Of the remaining three million, however, “much less was vaccinated”. “There is definitely a large volume that will soon expire,” says Bachmann.
There are no exact figures on the inventory. From the data published by the Ministry of Health, however, a stock level of around 8.2 million vaccine doses can be derived – of which almost seven million are centrally stored, the rest have been delivered but not yet vaccinated. Seven million cans are to be added in the first quarter of 2022. The expert expected that, at best, 5.6 million doses would be needed in spite of mandatory vaccinations and booster vaccinations. This need is a “theoretical best-case scenario” and is based on the fact that all those who are required to be vaccinated are vaccinated or boosted, and also “a good part” of the five to eleven year old children.
Bachmann as pointed out that exact statements about the expiry of vaccine doses are difficult because of the insufficient transparency of the authorities. An APA request to the Ministry of Health regarding the expiry dates of the vaccines currently in storage remained unanswered until Wednesday. Previously, there were two deadlines prescribed by the Ministry of Health for responding to elapsed.
The German Ministry of Health had already sounded the alarm in mid-October in a letter to the EU health authority Hera, calling for the removal of critical hurdles for vaccine exports. Some countries are threatened with “having to throw away large amounts of valuable vaccines”. The Austrian Ministry of Health said at the time that larger vaccine donations were not planned until 2022. At that time there were 4.3 million vaccine doses in Austria. The ministry stressed that the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson cans should be donated. A good 3.6 million doses of mRNA vaccines would be needed for third stitches as well as first and second vaccinations.
According to the Ministry of Health, Austria has already donated 2.2 million vaccine doses internationally, almost half of them to Iran. Increasing donations is difficult not only because of bureaucratic hurdles, but also because of the short shelf life. In general, the current system, in which vaccination doses are first delivered to one country and then passed on to others, is “absurd”, according to Bachmann. “Conversely, we would never accept such a long illogical supply chain.”
The mismatch between full camps in Austria and a shortage of vaccines in large parts of the world shows for the expert that a “change of strategy” is needed in the supply of vaccines. The concept of compulsory licenses proposed by Economics Minister Margarete Schramböck (ÖVP) is said to be too slow, too expensive and insufficient to be effective quickly enough. The only sensible way is to suspend patent protection and decentralized vaccine production, affirmed Bachmann’s demand from MSF and numerous other NGOs, which Mückstein and his predecessors from the ranks of the SPÖ and ÖVP have already joined.
Bachmann pointed out that the Omikron variant could only arise because of the high number of infections and the rare vaccination rates. If you continue the previous policy, “then I fear that this is the best basis for other variants that can do even more” because they are more infectious or deadly than the previous one or undermine the protective effect of vaccinations, says Bachmann.