Belgium will have to throw away 1.3 million expired doses of vaccine
About 1.3 million in total. First 436,800 doses of AstraZeneca, which will expire on May 31. Then 880,000 doses of Pfizer and Moderna in July, for the same reason, we read Monday in Le Soir, which obtained the information from the vaccination taskforce. Waste ? The nuanced authorities. Belgium is not the only country to have to get rid of the surplus of vaccines (France threw away 3.6 million doses last month) and the will assumed has always been to order more doses than necessary in order to diversify the sources of supply, and thereby the suppliers.
With the slowdown in the vaccination campaign, a stock was logically built up, with around 9 million doses. A stock of which a large part is kept in order to be able to vaccinate the entire population if the epidemic were to resume. And so, at least from a new severe wave, it will therefore still be necessary to throw away a lot of doses in the coming months or in 2023, writes Le Soir.
And why not offer these vaccines close to their expiry date to poor countries via the international Covax platform? No need, we assure you. “Covax now has enough doses to cover demand,” we say to the platform.