EU countries destroy €4B worth of COVID vaccines
EU countries destroy €4B worth of COVID vaccines
A POLITICO analysis shows that more than 200M unwanted coronavirus jabs have been dumped.
Hard to find exactly why, but there is this fragment:
Vaccine-makers have also since introduced newer versions that are adapted to the latest coronavirus variants, making older jabs obsolete and more likely to be discarded.
Also vaccines don't last forever, and at some point these ones would become risky enough that it wouldn't be advisable to give them to those who didn't get any (original version or recent).
This headline speaks to the logistics and distribution problems, as well as things like patents and profit.
There will be other pandemics in the future, and we need to do better.
Honestly, except for the ridiculous levels of vaccine hesitancy, I think the world gets a passing grade for this pandemic. The response (from scientists not politicians) was fast and strong... and, for an emergency, the amount of waste wasn't unreasonable.
Why was the EU stockpiling so many while Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America were reliant on the Sinovac/Sinopharm/CanSino vaccines?
Yep, one of my kids got freaking Sputnik here in Guatemala since our president is an idiot and spent the whole initial vaccine budget on sputnik and then it was impossible for him to travel to the US for several years since they don't accept Sputnik and he can't get another vaccine since he's already in the system as having gotten one.
I can't speak to the other countries on this list but South Africa had ample access to vaccines. The take-up was low. Reasons offered were doubts around the efficacy and conservative attitudes to modern medicine.
Because we are the best and don't care about poor countries
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At least 215 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines purchased by EU countries at the height of the pandemic have since been thrown away at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of €4 billion, an analysis by POLITICO reveals.
Since the first coronavirus vaccines were approved in late 2020, EU countries have collectively taken delivery of 1.5 billion doses (more than three for every person in Europe).
Top of the scale is Estonia, which binned more than one dose per inhabitant, followed closely by Germany, which also threw away the largest raw volume of jabs.
POLITICO's calculations are based on numbers from 19 European countries — 15 that supplied us with direct figures, and four where volumes were reported in local media.
Vaccine-makers have also since introduced newer versions that are adapted to the latest coronavirus variants, making older jabs obsolete and more likely to be discarded.
It was during that frenzied time that the EU entered into its single biggest contract to purchase 1.1 billion doses from Pfizer and BioNTech.
The original article contains 646 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I'd take that €4B number with a grain of salt: Had the EU ordered fewer the price per vaccine would've been higher which is perfectly sensible not just because of economies of scale but also because a large chunk of the cost was one-off, not per-dose, costs. Development, testing etc.
As to donating the doses: It's probably complicated, e.g. the BioNTech stuff requires sub-zero cooling which isn't exactly easy to ensure when you're a developing country.
Doesn't sub zero just mean below zero temperatures?
-60 to -80C for long-term storage, two weeks at -15 to -25 (those are standard pharmaceutical freezer temperatures, five days at fridge temperatures.
Great, they were outdated for this day, so basically useless
And here I am trying to get a voluntary booster. Fml.