Media: More Than 15 Million Vaccines Thrown Away in the United States

At least 15 million corona vaccines have been thrown away in the United States since March, NBC News reports, based on data from the United States Health Service (CDC).

Pharmacists, local governments, and other injecting institutions have themselves passed on the data to the CDC. In reality, according to NBC News, there may be many more vaccines that have gone in the trash.

For example, vaccines are discarded if a mistake has been made in distributing the liquid over hypodermic needles or if the vaccine has not been stored at the correct temperature.

“Yet it is tragic that millions of vaccines are wasted when there are countries in Africa where less than 5 percent of the population is vaccinated,” Sharifah Sekalala, who researches inequality and infectious diseases at the University of Warwick in Britain, told NBC News.

A CDC spokesperson stressed that the number of vaccines thrown away is still “meagre” relative to the total number of people vaccinated in the US. More than 370 million shots have been taken in the country.

It is not clear how many vaccines have been thrown away in the Netherlands.