More Than 82 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Have Been Tossed Out

More than 82 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been thrown out as the demand for vaccine orders declines.

Between December 2020 through the middle of May of this year, 82.1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, which the federal government distributed, have been tossed in the trash, NBC News reports.

Federal agencies, pharmacies and more threw out the vaccine doses. Some of the pharmacies, which were responsible for discarding over a quarter of the doses, included Walmart and CVS. Some of the reasons behind throwing the vaccines out are due to the number of vaccine doses that pharmacies were put in charge of managing.

While many of the doses were thrown out, more doses were used. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the amount of loss in doses falls in line with what the organization projected. However, the org said the number of doses wasted is still more than necessary, NBC News reports. Does have also been thrown out because pharmacies and companies have been putting in minimum orders or opting for multidose vials, NBC News reports.

Dr. Sheela Shenoi, an infectious disease expert at the Yale School of Medicine, says the loss of doses hurts the ability to control the spread of the virus, NBC News reports.

“It’s a tremendous loss to pandemic control — especially in the context of millions of people around the world who haven’t even been able to get a first dose,” said Dr. Shenoi.