Canada has wasted 1M vaccine doses

2.6% of national supply trashed

An informal survey shows that at least one million doses of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine supply have gone to waste.

The Canadian Press asked health ministries across the country to provide the number of doses that had to be disposed of because they had expired or for other reasons.

Not all were able to reply by deadline. Some jurisdictions, including Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Prince Edward Island, only provided the number of expired doses. Ontario refused to provide any information.

The survey suggests at least 1,016,669 doses have been rejected since vaccines first arrived in December. That’s about 2.6 per cent of the supply delivered to the provinces and territories that provided numbers.

Unused doses vary wildly across Canada. Alberta reported disposing of 10 per cent of its doses; Nova Scotia 0.3 per cent.

Some waste is to be expected, but Canada should be striving for the lowest amount possible, said Dr. Ross Upshur of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and co-chair of the WHO’s COVID-19 ethics working group.

It’s difficult to know if Canada is meeting that goal because of poor data-sharing and a lack of transparency, said Upshur.

“Some of that wastage might be from breaches of cold chain (some vaccines must be kept at low temperatures), but some could be not getting them into arms before the vaccine expires. It’s a complex, complex, complex issue,” Upshur said.

Provinces gave various reasons for wasted doses, including dropped vials or syringes, defective syringes or damaged vials, poor dose management and expired doses. Many could not provide a full breakdown.

Without complete data it’s hard to know whether Canada’s vaccine supply is being managed effectively, said Upshur.

For example, only some provinces could provide the number of doses that expired.

In those provinces and territories, about 0.45 per cent of their vaccines had to be tossed because of an expiry date — about 120,578 doses.