The Ministry of Health says it has no other choice since the doses expired on Wednesday.
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As France heads towards an eighth wave of Covid-19, Switzerland is forced to destroy 10.3 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, the expiry date of which was reached earlier in the week, announced on Saturday September 24 the Swiss Ministry of Health.
The ministry says it has no other choice since the doses expired on Wednesday, according to comments reported by the Swiss press agency Keystone-ATS, confirming information from the Beobachter news site. According to the latter, the cost of the doses intended for destruction amounted to some 280 million Swiss francs (294 million euros).
A surplus of 38 million doses
In addition, 2.5 million doses are still stored at an army logistics base, and 7.8 million are kept in a depot in Belgium, the ministry said, stressing that its vaccine supply strategy consisted , from the start, to order more doses than necessary for the 8.7 million inhabitants of Switzerland.
In June, the Swissinfo news site estimated that the Swiss country had a surplus of 38 million doses of the various vaccines against Covid, which would expire before the end of the year.