DoH vows minimal Covid vaccine wastage

The Department of Health on Wednesday said that it will exhaust all efforts to ensure that vaccine wastage among national government-procured vaccines remains minimal.

"The DoH reiterated its commitment to ensuring that vaccine wastage is minimized and taxpayer money is well-spent and accounted for," the DoH said.

The department issued the remarks following recent reports that millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccine stocks have expired.

The agency clarified that of the bulk of the wastage, the majority or 44.82 percent came from the procurements made by the private sector while 33.35 percent came from those procured by the local government units.

Likewise, the Health department said that out of the total vaccines procured by the national government financed through general appropriations and loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, only 2.02 percent of the total number of procured vaccines have expired.

The DoH underscored that the figure sits well below the globally recognized maximum allowable vaccine wastage rate of 25 percent which is set by the GAVI alliance.

In addition, the department also revealed that 10.95 percent of the country's total donated vaccines through the COVAX facility have expired.

However, the agency assured the public that it already secured the commitment of the COVAX facility to replace expired doses with bivalent vaccines which better contribute to vaccination efforts.