COVID-19 vaccine wastage data from the CDC (opens in new tab)

That's for the country as a whole, though. I'd expect it to vary quite a bit from state to state. In some of the low vaccination rate/high COVID rate states there were pharmacies having almost their entire allotment expire due to low demand.

It will be interesting to see the geographic distribution when the site gets this part done:

> I’m working on mapping all retail pharmacy locations to waste over time

In fairness to the rich countries, when they placed orders no one really knew how many people would be willing to get vaccinated. So naturally they estimated on the high side.

Not that logistics aren't a real issue and just because some waste could have been prevented if only we could have magically teleported it to a person who needed it exactly when they needed it, doesn't mean that there was any realistic way the wastage could have been prevented without creating other, worse issues.

But do remember, I’m sure New Zealand would also end up wasting a decent number of doses in the process of vaccinating their population.

Making things convenient often requires using resources less efficiently, and we can’t get everyone vaccinated unless getting vaccinated is convenient.

It's such a shame, too. You can likely re-freeze the spikevax vials with partial shots to be used at a later date, but that's too uncontrolled to add to the EUA/BLA label. Comirnaty is (was) in phosphate buffer and saline, which you really cannot re-freeze. They did just request a formulation change to the same composition as spikevax (or at least very similar), which should also get rid of the saline dilution step making it overall much easier to administer.

Not sure about that. When the mass vaccination phase will end, sure, but now, with adequate planning, we can still make good use of these multi-dose vials. 3% waste is bad but not that bad.

I remember in the beginning of the vaccination campaign that the vials themselves were in short order. It is probably all sorted out but making 10 times more will create additional logistics and production challenges. Is it worth it in order to save less than 3% of the substance?

And there are solutions to the wasted doses. Basically, plan the vaccinations ahead to have the required number of people and setup a waiting list so that if someone doesn't show up, call someone else. Where I got vaccinated, I asked them the question about the potentially wasted extra doses, and they proudly told me that using that method they didn't waste a single dose out of the 10000+ they administered.

EDIT: As for the New-Zealand reference, we can also say that we could have vaccinated 0.5% if India with all these doses, which sounds much less impressive. It is all a matter of proportion. I also think that in the case of New-Zealand, right now, being a remote island is more of a problem than the availability of doses, thankfully, it is also helps them keeping covid at bay.

11M is a big number. 3% isn't, that's actually pretty good; there's a tradeoff between vaccinating slower and not wasting doses.

Twice over