Health departments across the country are trying to minimize the waste of unused COVID-19 vaccine doses amid waning demand for vaccinations, ABC News reported April 25.
Millions of doses have either gone to waste, remain unused or are set to expire in the next few weeks to months, according to ABC News' analysis of health department data provided by all 50 states.
For example, more than 100,000 doses are set to expire in Michigan in the next two weeks. The state health department is working with local officials to fill providers' vaccine orders with existing inventory and redistributing vaccines with approaching expiration dates across the state before ordering more doses, a spokesperson told ABC News. In total, 1.7 million doses have gone to waste in Michigan since December 2020.
"It is a tremendous loss of opportunity for these vaccines to not make it into the shoulders of those who need them," C. Buddy Creech, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program and the Edie Carell Johnson Chair and professor of pediatrics in the division of pediatric infectious diseases at Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told ABC News. "Not only is it a financial loss for the purchaser of vaccines — the U.S. government — but also a significant health loss for those who are not yet protected from COVID and its complications."
Overall, states have received 720 million vaccine doses during the pandemic, more than 570 million of which have been administered, according to federal data cited by ABC News.