EPA/Focke Strangmann
As demand falls and shelf life is limited, more and more German provinces are throwing vaccines in the trash. Now the plan is to donate the surplus to poorer countries – but only vector-based vaccines.
Since the start of the pandemic, Bavaria has shed a total of 53,000 doses of the vaccine, more than half of which were “reported rejected” in July alone. “The increase in the amount of vaccine thrown away during the summer is a direct consequence of the decline in the population’s readiness for vaccination,” the Bavarian Ministry of Health said at the request of the German public service.
In Baden-Württemberg, 4,000 doses of AstraZenek vaccine expired at the end of July, which is why they were “properly destroyed”, according to the Ministry of Health there.
Similar actions were carried out in other German federal states.
These now-discarded vaccines have already been delivered to vaccination centers. It is unclear how many doses of the vaccine were removed as unusable in private medical offices, because doctors do not have to report it to anyone.
The provinces return the surplus of vaccines that have not expired to the federal government. As the demand for vaccines is currently much lower than the supply, the federal Ministry of Health has announced that it will stop “delivering” to the provinces the quantities to which they are entitled by key – the number of inhabitants “during August”. In the future, only the quantity they order will be delivered to the provinces.
Now – donations
Now that the domestic population has been settled, Germany has announced that it will deliver 1.3 million doses of AstraZeneca to the COVAX initiative in the coming days, which distributes vaccines to poorer countries. The federal ministry also announced that it would cancel further orders for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in August – in favor of other European countries.
The Bayontek-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will not be distributed to other countries – they will be kept in the central vaccine warehouse for the whole of Germany.
Internationally, the EU currently donates relatively few vaccines to poorer countries. According to an internal EU report from August 2, the United States has so far given 59.8 million doses in 45 countries. Another 20 million doses follow in the next few years.
China has already donated 24.2 million doses to 71 countries. The EU has donated 7.9 million doses to 36 countries alone, of which 3.3 million through COVAX.
Late last week, Josep Borelj criticized the fact that the EU, with its so far scarce deliveries to Africa and Latin America, risks losing influence in relation to China in those countries.
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