Vaccine fury: 600,000 AstraZeneca doses thrown away

Vaccine fury: 600,000 AstraZeneca doses thrown away after coronavirus jabs hit expiry date.

Reportedly hundreds of thousands of doses of coronavirus vaccines are being thrown in the bin instead of being given to poorer countries. Oxfam has labelled this as “disgraceful” and said it is “very much the tip of the iceberg”.

In the UK the AstraZeneca vaccine stopped being administered to people under 40 years old in May. This was due to reports of blood clots developing in rare cases.

This meant that a surplus of jabs was accumulated in the region of 600,000 doses. They expired in August and had to be disposed of according to information gained through a Freedom of information request.

Anna Marriott is the health policy manager at Oxfam. Commenting on vaccines being thrown away she said: “Our estimates suggest at least 100 million vaccine doses could go unused and expire in G7 countries by the end of this year.

“This number could increase even further to around 800 million wasted doses by mid-2022. There’s a clear case that rich countries have to get their act together here.”

The UK has committed to providing 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccines to poorer countries by mid-2022. So far only around 20 million doses have been delivered though.

Ms Marriott added: “Their short-sighted vaccine nationalism and their free pass to big pharmaceutical giants to profit as much as they like from these publicly funded vaccines is prolonging the pandemic and costing lives.”

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