The CDC has issued new guidance directing healthcare providers giving COVID-19 vaccines to prioritize vaccinating as many people as possible over ensuring no vaccines go to waste.
"As access to COVID-19 vaccine increases, it is important for providers to not miss any opportunity to vaccinate every eligible person who presents at vaccine clinics," the guidance, updated May 18, reads. "We recognize that as we continue to create more opportunities to vaccinate more people, it may increase the likelihood of leaving unused doses in a vial. While we want to continue to follow best practices to use every dose possible, we do not want that to be at the expense of missing an opportunity to vaccinate every eligible person when they are ready to get vaccinated."
COVID-19 vaccines are shipped in bulk packaging, which is ideal for mass-vaccination sites, but can lead to wasted doses at physician's offices and other locations that vaccinate fewer people. Johnson & Johnson's vaccines are shipped in vials containing five doses, Pfizer's vials contain six doses, and Moderna's vials can contain up to 15 doses, The Wall Street Journal reported May 21.
Once a vial is opened, all of the doses inside must be used within 12 hours for Moderna's vaccine, six hours for Pfizer's vaccine and two to six hours for Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, depending on what temperature it was stored at, the CDC said.
"If you have someone in front of you who needs a vaccine, go ahead and use what you've got and try to use it as best you can and as efficiently as you can. But we know that we're at a point where there will be some wastage that is unavoidable. We've got to get people vaccinated now,” Thomas Dobbs, MD, state health officer for Mississippi, told the Journal.
Pfizer said that it will offer smaller shipments of its vaccines starting at the end of May to ease access to rural communities and decrease waste for locations that vaccinate fewer people.
The CDC hopes to maintain waste levels below 2 percent of the total vaccines delivered in the U.S., the Journal reported. The national wastage rate was 0.4 percent as of May 20.
"Before, the demand was so high and the scarcity seemed so real that the focus was: not a wasted dose. Now the mentality has shifted to: not a missed opportunity," Kelly Rodney Arnold, MD, a physician at Clínica Médicos in Chattanooga, Tenn., told the Journal.
Health authorities are still hesitant to waste too many doses, however, since vaccines are abundant in the U.S. but remain scarce globally, the Journal reported.
"There's going to be more thrown-away doses. And that's a real tragedy. But it's not like that dose sitting inside a CVS was going to go to India. That's not how it works," Sean Valles, director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice at Michigan State University in East Lansing, told the Journal.
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