WHITE HOUSE REJECTS PLANS TO DONATE EXPIRING UNUSED COVID-19 VACCINES

Tue 26 October 2021:

Despite the fact that surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses in US states are about to expire, the White House Vaccine Task Force recently rejected a request to send unused doses to other countries, according to the Washington Post.

The demand for COVID-19 vaccines has decreased in Southern California, despite the fact that the expiration dates of the unused doses are approaching. As a result, a tiny group in San Diego proposed donating thousands of vaccines to Mexico, where the vaccination campaign was carried out slowly and with a high infection rate, according to the Post.

According to the article, the White House task force has blocked such initiatives as well as similar efforts by local and state governments to donate unused vaccines to foreign countries.

“Vaccines in the United States are the property of the federal government, not the cities or states in which they are distributed. That means the federal government is liable for their use, and donation efforts must be run out of Washington,” the paper quoted White House officials as saying.

Earlier this month The Guardian reported, at least 15m doses were scrapped in the US between March and September, according to one analysis of CDC data. A separate investigation found 1m doses were discarded in 10 states between December and July.

Thousands of doses are reportedly wasted each day in Wisconsin. In Alabama, more than 65,000 doses have been tossed; in Tennessee, it’s almost 200,000.

As millions of people around the world wait for their first doses. Only 1% of the populations of low-income countries had received first shots as of July, compared with more than half of those living in a handful of high-income countries.

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