TORONTO -- The prolonged quality assurance process of AstraZeneca vaccines has created a secondary risk — wasting doses.
“The longer it took to get them into pharmacies...the higher the risk was that we would introduce some degree of wastage,” said Justin Bates, chief executive officer of the Ontario Pharmacists Association. “Our goal remains to avoid that scenario.”
On Monday, 45,000 AstraZeneca doses will expire. Today, Bates said the final batch of vials that was going through quality assurance is expected to arrive at Ontario pharmacies. Meaning, there are three days left to administer the remaining doses.
On May 11, Ontario paused the rollout of first doses of AstraZeneca out of an “abundance of caution” due to an increased risk of rare blood clots. For ten days, vaccine vials sat in Ontario pharmacy refrigerators, which led to a mandated quality assurance check before the vaccines went into arms.
Infectious disease expert Dr. Zain Chagla said, “It would have been probably good to say, okay, in the scenario that we could give second doses, what are we going to do to actually make sure that people get second doses?”
But instead of leveraging the ten days between pausing and resuming the rollout, getting ahead on quality assurance checks, the vials sat idle.
Dr. Chagla called the potential wasting of vaccine doses “tragic.”
“The rest of the world is struggling. And, we're too concerned about certain issues and administrative hurdles that waste doses,” he said.
While ensuring vaccines maintain a high quality is imperative, Bates said it’s standard for pharmacies to store and transfer vaccines safely, while maintaining quality.
“Taking too much of a cautious approach...could waste the doses,” he said.
With the time remaining, Dr. Chagla said the focus should be on opening up eligibility floodgates. At the moment, second dose appointments are only open to those who got the AstraZeneca shot between March 10 and 19. But he believes, anyone who received a first dose in March should be able to get their vaccine this weekend.
“This is probably the one step that can be done to reconcile...and make sure that we don't waste doses.”
Ontario pharmacies race to avoid 'tragic' vaccine wastage - CTV Toronto
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