Limited shelf life
Berlin (dpa) – According to Germany’s health insurance doctors, there is a risk of millions of corona vaccines expiring in Germany’s medical practices.
According to data from the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, the practices currently store 1.1 million doses from Astrazeneca and 0.4 million from Johnson & Johnson, according to a report by the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance in the Federal Republic of Germany available to the German Press Agency. These cans threatened to have to be disposed of as hazardous waste, said an institute spokesman. In addition, according to the report, 1.7 million cans of Biontech are in stock in the practices. Here it is more likely that they will still be needed. The ARD political magazine “Report Mainz” and “Spiegel” reported on it first.
The chairman of the institute, Dominik von Stillfried, called for unused vaccines to be taken back from the practices. This is legally and organizationally not possible today. “The Federal Ministry of Health is expected to collect between 2 and 2.5 million vaccination doses from the vaccination centers,” said von Stillfried of the dpa. He called for special regulations to take back the at least 1.5 million expired vaccine doses from the practices. Then they could be donated to vaccine-deficient countries. According to the Central Institute, the main reasons for the impending deterioration are the low willingness to vaccinate people who have not yet been vaccinated and the poor image of the Astrazeneca vaccine in particular.
Last week, a dpa survey had shown that more than half of the federal states had not yet had to destroy any of the vaccines delivered to the vaccination centers in the federal states. Nine of the 16 state governments stated that disposal of the corona vaccine could largely be avoided. The vaccination centers in Bavaria, for example, had already disposed of around 53,000 unused vaccine doses by then. In a letter that the dpa has received, the Federal Ministry of Health had given the federal states the opportunity to donate vaccines that are no longer needed to the central warehouse of the federal government as a donation for “third countries” – provided the active ingredient can be kept long enough.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210817-99-876030 / 2
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