Over 20 million vaccines against COVID-19 that were donated and procured have gone to waste this year, according to the Department of Health (DOH).
In a Senate briefing on Monday, DOH Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said a total of 20,660,354 COVID-19 jabs were wasted as of August 12
With this, the country’s COVID-19 vaccine wastage was now at 8.42% — still within the standard rate of 10% or lower set by the World Health Organization.
Senator Risa Hontiveros said the latest figure is almost double the 4.7% vaccine wastage reported in June.
"At this rate, Mr. Chair, by October, lalampas na tayo sa (we will exceed the) threshold ng World Health Organization na acceptable vaccine wastage limit na 10% so we might have accumulated vaccines faster than we could administer them," Hontiveros said, addressing Senate committee on health chairman Christopher "Bong" Go.
"Nakapanghihinayang na parang patapon ang paggasta ng bilyong piso para dito. It seems that our vaccine program is leaking billions of pesos," she added.
In data shared by Health Undersecretary Ma. Carolina Vida-Taiño, some 19 million doses have expired. These were from donations, as well as purchases made by local government units and the private sector.
None of those procured by the national government expired, Vergeire clarified.
Meanwhile, operational issues were to blame for the wastage of the remaining 1.6 million doses, according to DOH data.
"There were also wastage due to natural disasters like Typhoon Odette (Rai), fire, earthquakes, also due to temperature controls like thawed vaccines but were not used and temperature excursions, and the presence of [particulate] matters or discoloration in vials of vaccines," Vergeire said.
She noted that the COVAX facility has agreed to replace all expired vaccines “as long as these replacement vaccines will be used and will not expire again.”
"Based on our estimates, we will be consuming all of these existing stocks by December and our schedule for the COVAX deliveries or replacements would start December also so that we can have appropriate and adequate stocks by the first quarter of 2023," Vergeire added.
The health official said the government is no longer going to buy additional COVID-19 jabs until the end of the year.
“With first booster and second booster and based on uptake of vaccines right now, we will have enough to reach our targets that we do not need to procure more of these vaccines,” Vergeire said.
