While we were scrambling for doses just a year ago, vaccines against COVID-19 are now circulating in large quantities. Their abundance is such that we now consider having to dispose of them once their expiry date has passed. More than 4.3 million doses will become unusable by the end of the summer if Quebec does not find a buyer, a waste of nearly $161.25 million in federal government money.
All of the stocks of vaccines against COVID-19 that Quebec currently has will expire by the end of August, according to data from the Ministry of Health and Social Services, of which Le Devoir obtained a copy.
Ottawa has not officially communicated the price it paid for these vaccines, but a calculation based on information from Statistics Canada allows us to estimate the average price of a dose at $37.50.
Just under 50,000 doses are still administered each week by Quebec health authorities. At this rate, approximately 1 million doses will be injected by the end of the summer. If this trend continues, 3.3 million doses, with a total value of $123.75 million, will still be lost.
To avoid waste, Quebec makes sure to inject the vaccines with the earliest expiry date first.
More than 18.6 million doses of vaccine have been injected so far into Quebec arms.
This text is taken from our newsletter “Coronavirus mail” of March 28, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
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