Millions of AstraZeneca vaccines binned because no country wants them
Canada is to throw out almost 14m doses of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine after it struggled to find a country that would accept them.
Canada last year unveiled plans to donate around 17.7m doses of the AstraZeneca Covid jab to other countries, after concerns over the safety of the vaccine prompted it to prioritise those made by BioNTech and Moderna. It had initially ordered 20m AstraZeneca doses, although largely stopped using them amid questions over its potential link to very rare blood clots.
However, Canadian health officials have now said 13.6m of the doses it was planning to donate – or 77pc – had now expired and would need to be thrown away.
A spokesman for Health Canada said: “Due to limited demand for the vaccine and recipient country challenges with distribution and absorption, they were not accepted.”
Canada sent around 4.8m AstraZeneca doses to other countries, including islands in the Caribbean and countries in South America. It has also donated another 4.1m of the doses using the Covax scheme, by which countries provide funds to give vaccines to lower income countries.
In total, around 1.56bn doses of Covid vaccines have been shipped under the Covax scheme to 146 countries. However many low-income countries are still lagging on vaccine rollout, with just 12pc of people living in them fully vaccinated.
In the UK, around 73pc of the population has received two jabs, while globally the figure stands at just over 20pc.
Western countries have moved towards using Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, particularly for booster rollouts, after placing limits on who is able to receive AstraZeneca vaccines in the wake of blood clot concerns last year. During the first rollout last April, Britain issued guidance for people under 30 to be offered an alternative.
Currently, the majority of the vaccines given in the UK are either Pfizer or Moderna. Of the 38.9m booster jabs given in the country until June 15, some 30.5m were Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, while 9.3m were Moderna, and 57,700 were AstraZeneca.
