Vaccine Wastage

As the second wave of COVID-19 hits India, PM Modi raised concerns about vaccine wastage, i.e., the fraction of vaccines that go unused. The national average wastage rate is 6.5%, with Telengana and Andhra the worst offenders at 17.6% and 11.6%, and states like Tamil Nadu doing well at 3.7%.

 

So how does this wastage happen? Broadly, as this Indian Express article explains, it is split into two categories, as wastage in (1) Unopened vials, and (2) Opened vials.

 

In case of unopened vials, the reasons are (a) expiration date reached, (b) vaccine exposed to heat, (c) vaccine frozen, (d) breakage, (e) theft, and (f) discarding of unused vials. And in case of opened vials, the reasons are (a) discarding unused vials at the end of a session, (b) inability to draw enough doses from a vial, (c) submergence in water, (d) contamination, and (e) poor vaccine administration practices.

 

Or if you look at it from a different angle, wastage can happen during transportation, or storage or at the point of delivery. Transportation is done on an exact need basis:

“Issue of vaccine doses should match the registered list of beneficiaries (rounded off to the nearest higher whole number of vials)”

i.e., without any buffers added. While this may sound weird, it avoids, er, wastage of a different kind: there is no risk of the buffer going waste in this model.

 

The wastage is happening overwhelmingly at the point of delivery, the major culprits being (a) Enough people not turning up to use all 10 doses, and (b) inadequate skills of those injecting it. As mentioned, this wastage is becoming increasingly important at a time when the case count is rising.

 

In addition, there’s another problem: a shortage of raw materials to make the vaccine. And why is that happening? Because the US has invoked laws to restrict the export of some of that to cater to their own needs. So yes, we definitely need to tighten things.