Share of population completely vaccinated grew just 5 percentage points since April
Millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses in India may expire in August-September 2022 as the country’s COVID-19 vaccine uptake for primary inoculation stagnated and for boosters remained poor.
More than 118.1 million balance and unutilised COVID-19 vaccine doses are still available with the states and Union territories to be administered, the health ministry noted June 28, 2022. It remains unclear when exactly these doses will expire.
Around 65.43 per cent of the eligible population has completed the initial vaccination protocol, a figure that has increased barely five percentage points since April, according to Our World in Data. Booster doses per 100 was just 3.07 as of June 27, despite it being available for everyone above 18 years of age.
As many as 1.97 billion doses have been administered till now since the COVID-19 vaccination drive began in January 2021, according to the latest data shared by the union health ministry. Of these, 44.7 million are precautionary doses.
Serum Institute of India (SII) Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla had told CNBC-TV18 at the World Economic Forum held in Davos earlier this year:
We will lose 200 million doses of vaccines minimum. We might have to destroy them as they are nearing expiry by August-September this year.
As many as 241 million COVID-19 vaccine doses purchased by the G7 and the European Union went unused and expired by March 2022, as per health analytics firm Airfinity.
SII produces Covishield, developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, and Covovax, a subunit of the vaccine developed by Novavax and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. It stopped production of the former in December 2021.
Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin has a shelf life of a year while Covishield, the most widely administered vaccine in India, has a shelf life of nine months. “Bharat Biotech has been working proactively with private hospitals for the past several months to liquidate stocks and reduce the quantum of expired vaccines. We are replacing expired doses and also helping liquidate their stocks,” a report in the daily Business Standard report noted.
It remains unclear exactly how many doses are set to expire.
Russia-made Sputnik V and Biological E's Corbevax are other vaccines available in India. In May 2022, soon after Corbevax received Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) in India, the pharmaceutical company slashed the price of the single-dose vaccine to Rs 400 from Rs 990 a dose, including taxes and vaccine administration charges.
Attempting to reduce vaccine wastage — a huge burden for private hospitals — was a key reason behind this move.
The Drugs Controller General of India also approved Zydus’ ZyCoV-D vaccine — the world's first DNA vaccine against COVID-19. Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine has been cleared for use in India and was to be supplied by Biological E, while Indian pharma company Cipla was authorised to import the Moderna vaccine. Neither of these are currently available.
As vaccine wastage becomes a growing concern, data from Airfinity showed high-income countries have 600 million doses in stock, upper-middle-income countries have 613 million, lower-middle-income countries 657 million and low-income-countries 109 million doses as of last month.
Despite such a huge stock, vaccine inequity persists. Inequitable distribution is a key reason, as is a shorter shelf-life, for developing countries receiving doses too close to the expiration date and sometimes even after, showed reports.
The expiration date of a vaccine is “a reflection of how long the vaccine retains its potency and stability at a given storage temperature and therefore its effectiveness,” the World Health Organization noted.
If expired, the vaccine is not unsafe or dangerous. Shelf-lives of both Covaxin and Covishiled were increased by three months last year by the Drugs Controller General of India.
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