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Health Canada said about 13.6 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine had to be discarded because a recipient could not be found by the expiration date.
Canada signed a contract with AstraZeneca to buy 20 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine in 2020. The country then launched a massive vaccination campaign, mainly from March 2021 to June 2021, with 2.3 million people receiving at least one dose of the vaccine.
However, Canada turned to Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccines amid concerns about a rare blood clotting reaction following AstraZeneca’s vaccine.
In July 2021, Canada pledged to donate the remaining 17.7 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. But on July 5, Health Canada said there were still 13.6 million doses that had expired and had to be thrown away.
A doctor uses a vial of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine on April 30, 2021 in Vienna, Austria. picture: Reuters.
Canada has donated a total of 8.9 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, with 4.8 million from suppliers and 4.1 million from the Covax mechanism.
“Due to limited demand for vaccines, receiving countries have difficulty distributing and using them, so they are rejecting these vaccines,” Health Canada said in a statement.
About 85% of Canadians are considered fully vaccinated. This ratio is 61% in the world and only 16% in the poorest countries.
Many European countries are experiencing a new Covid-19 outbreak. Experts have warned that the number of Covid-19 cases could rise sharply in the summer as restrictions are almost completely lifted and booster rates are low. New infections in Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark were mainly caused by two sublines of the Omicron variant, BA.4 and BA.5.
“The pandemic has accelerated again,” said Benjamin Davideau, an infectious disease specialist at the Raymond-Poincaré Hospital in the Paris suburb of France. “It is important that we maintain stable immunity with booster shots.”
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