(Toronto) Informal investigation shows at least one million doses of vaccine against the COVID-19 virus have been discarded in Canada.
The Canadian Press has asked health ministries across the country to indicate how many doses had to be sacrificed, especially because their expiry date had been passed, but also for any other reason.
Some departments did not respond by the requested date. Ontario refused to provide information while other jurisdictions, such as the Yukon and Prince Edward Island, only provided the number of expired doses.
However, the survey showed that since the arrival of the first vaccines in Canada in December 2020, at least 1,016,669 doses have been discarded, which represents approximately 2.6% of all doses distributed to provinces and territories. territories that have agreed to provide their data.
The percentage of unused doses has varied widely across the country; for example, it was 10% in Alberta, but only 0.3% in Nova Scotia.
Toronto public health physician Ross Upshur, who is also a leader of the World Health Organization (WHO) Ethics Commission, laments that it is difficult to accurately determine how Vaccine doses are used appropriately in Canada due to lack of transparency and poor data exchange.
He points out that some doses may be forfeited simply because of their expiration date, but others may be discarded because they were not stored at a required temperature. The provinces have listed several different reasons for discarding doses, including difficulties with syringes.
The Dr Upshur recalls that several decades of massive vaccination programs have often shown that wasted doses are a reality.
Adam Houston, of the organization Médecins sans Frontières, is still outraged by the loss of doses in Canada when 47% of the world population eligible for vaccination against COVID-19 has not yet benefited from a first injection. In his view, wasting doses during a pandemic is the worst-case scenario and he urges Canada to do more to avoid it as much as possible.