EU countries destroy €4B worth of COVID vaccines – POLITICO

Not less than 215 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines bought by EU nations on the peak of the pandemic have since been thrown away at an estimated price to the taxpayer of €4 billion, an evaluation by POLITICO reveals. And that is virtually actually an underestimate.

Because the first coronavirus vaccines had been accepted in late 2020, EU nations have collectively taken supply of 1.5 billion doses (greater than three for each individual in Europe). Many of those now lie in landfills throughout the Continent.

Calculations based mostly on out there knowledge present that EU nations have discarded a mean of 0.7 jabs for each member of their inhabitants. Prime of the size is Estonia, which binned a couple of dose per inhabitant, adopted intently by Germany, which additionally threw away the most important uncooked quantity of jabs.

If this common waste charge is projected throughout the remainder of the EU, it will equal greater than 312 million destroyed vaccines.

It is not straightforward to find what number of vaccines have been thrown out. Governments, together with the EU’s second-most populous nation France, are reluctant to disclose the size of the waste.

POLITICO’s calculations are based mostly on numbers from 19 European nations — 15 that provided us with direct figures, and 4 the place volumes had been reported in native media. Some figures date from as lately as this month; the oldest come from December 2022.

The passage of time means the figures we obtained are conservative, with the actual variety of discarded vaccines possible a lot larger.

Germany, for instance, offered its waste figures to POLITICO in June; on the time it had one other 120 million vaccines sitting in storage. Vaccine-makers have additionally since launched newer variations which are tailored to the newest coronavirus variants, making older jabs out of date and extra more likely to be discarded.

POLITICO estimates the worth of the 215 million wasted vaccines at greater than €4 billion, based mostly on vaccine costs reported within the media (they haven’t been made public). For nations that solely reported the overall variety of vaccines destroyed, with out breaking it down by vaccine kind, POLITICO used a weighted common worth of €19.39 calculated from knowledge given by nations that offered a breakdown.

Once more, this determine is nearly actually a minimal. However even €4 billion is a substantial sum, equal to a big infrastructure challenge or to the annual well being care spending of Croatia.

Lots of the vaccines in query had been bought on the peak of the pandemic in 2021 when the EU, the U.S. and the U.Ok. had been all scrambling to safe a restricted variety of doses. It was throughout that frenzied time that the EU entered into its single greatest contract to buy 1.1 billion doses from Pfizer and BioNTech.

It is simple to overlook how unsure issues had been in 2021, and the EU deal was lauded on the time. However each the scale and the timing of the settlement turned out to be problematic. International locations had been locked into shopping for doses even because the pandemic subsided, whereas efforts to donate extra jabs to 3rd nations had been thwarted by falling demand and logistics points.

The repercussions are greater than monetary. Questions round how the large Pfizer contract was negotiated have dogged Fee President Ursula von der Leyen ever for the reason that New York Occasions reported that the EU chief had exchanged messages with Pfizer’s CEO within the run-up to the deal.

The contract has already been renegotiated by the European Fee beneath stress from EU nations affected by a vaccine glut. Each Poland and Hungary stopped accepting vaccines and are being sued by Pfizer for non-payment. In Romania, prosecutors need to elevate immunity for its former prime minister and two former well being ministers, claiming extreme vaccine purchases triggered greater than €1 billion in damages to the state.

Within the meantime, the jabs will hold coming, with the revised contract with Pfizer locking European nations into shopping for vaccines till a minimum of 2027.