More than $2 billion worth of unused covid vaccines wasted… while discarding 13 million Johnson & Johnson injections

More than $2 billion in unused Covid vaccines have been wasted during the pandemic, data suggests.

More than 300 million doses of four vaccine brands have been discarded or donated to other countries: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and Novavax.

There are multiple reasons for the waste, including vaccine hesitancy and overspending by the US government.

Yet despite the numbers and declining demand, the World Health Organization has called for new covid vaccines to be developed this winter that target mutated variants.

According data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)596 million Pfizer Covid vaccines have been delivered to states as of May 11. That includes both the original Pfizer vaccine and the updated booster from Omicron.

But only 404 million have been administered, leaving 192 million unaccounted for.

And 355 million Moderna vaccines, including the updated booster, were delivered, but only 253 million were assembled, leaving 102 million unused.

Since federal purchases of Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines cost an average of $20.69 per dose, according to Kaiser Family Foundation analysisthis equates to $2 billion.

Some 12.5 million doses of J&J were left over, plus 1.3 million injections of Novavax Covid.

J&J’s shots are $10 a dose, while Novavax’s are $16 each, for a total of $1.5 million in unused vaccines from both drugmakers.

Overall, there have been 309 million unused Covid vaccines, costing the US roughly $2.3 billion.

Jeffrey Lazarus, professor of global health at the City University of New York, told DailyMail.com: “During the height of the Covid pandemic, wasted vaccines were a tragedy given how effectively they protected against symptoms. serious and death”.

‘Such waste demonstrated the world’s lack of preparation, coordination and effort to ensure high vaccination rates everywhere. Today, vaccine waste is the result of overproduction coupled with persistent vaccine hesitancy.’

Edmund Haislmaier, a senior fellow at the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health and Wellness Policy, told DailyMail.com: “As with flu vaccines, if manufacturers and governments significantly overestimate demand, the result It can be large amounts of unused vaccine.” .’

The CDC said nbc news In June of last year, between December 2020 and mid-May 2022, US pharmacies, states, territories, and federal agencies discarded 82.1 million doses of covid vaccines.

Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have an expiration of 18 months.

But there are other reasons to rule out doses. A vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine often includes five to six doses, while a vial of the Moderna vaccine includes up to ten.

Sometimes a new vial is opened to vaccinate a person, but if no one else is ready to receive the remaining doses, the rest of the vial must be thrown away.

But vaccine hesitancy has become increasingly prevalent in the US.

Seventy percent of Americans, or 230 million people, received both doses of the original Covid vaccine, CDC data shows.

But only 17 percent of eligible Americans, or 56 million people, have come forward to receive the updated bivalent booster shot.

A CDC Execution survey found that the main reasons people don’t get the bivalent booster are due to “perceived immunity” to the virus along with confusion about whether they were eligible.

The OMS said in March that healthy children and adolescents you don’t need a covid vaccine and in the middle of the fall capturing updated shots.

Waste has become an issue as we look back on the pandemic response in the US.

This week DailyMail.com reported how A team of economists, public policy researchers and other experts from the University of Southern California found that Covid has cost the US economy $14 trillion, and counting.

Triggering lockdowns that were once unthinkable and upending the global economy, the pandemic has killed more than 1.1 million Americans and hospitalized many more.

The researchers said the economic effects of the pandemic were “unprecedented” for the US.

Using data from the first two and a half years of the pandemic, the researchers forecast the scale of Covid monetary losses from January 2020 to December 2023.

They approximated the loss of income due to forced business closures and also considered the economic burden of behavioral disruptions, including avoiding restaurants, theaters, and other crowded places.

Work absences and lost sales due to the suspension of shopping on foot, flights abroad and public meetings were the most impactful.

The most affected sectors were air travel companies, which fell 58 percent, catering, which fell 27 percent, and health and social services, which fell 30 percent.

Fortunately, the skyrocketing online shopping, government financial aid packages, and the transition to working from home kept some economic activity going.

Between 2020 and 2023, the US cumulative net economic output will total approximately $103 trillion.

If Covid hadn’t happened, total GDP over those four years would have been $117 trillion.

The cost of US GDP is double the impact of the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009.