Newsroom
In a concerning revelation, European countries have disposed of more than 215 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, originally procured at the peak of the pandemic. According to a recent Politico report, this massive discard comes at a hefty cost of €4 billion to taxpayers.
The report highlights that EU countries, having received approximately 1.5 billion doses (equivalent to over three doses per person), are now witnessing a significant portion of these vaccines ending up in landfills across the continent.
Digging into the data, the average vaccine wastage stands at 0.7 doses per person. Estonia leads the scale, discarding more than one dose per capita, with Germany following closely as the country with the highest volume of discarded vaccines.
Specifically, the countries with the highest reported vaccine wastage are Germany (83 million), Italy (49,105,220), the Netherlands (16,284,000), and Spain (13,870,197).
Analyzing doses discarded per population, Estonia takes the lead with 1.1 doses per person, trailed by Germany (0.98 doses per person), Slovenia (0.04 doses per person), and the Netherlands (0.91 doses per person).
Politico's findings are based on data from 19 European countries, with 15 providing relevant information and an additional four having their discarded amounts sourced from domestic media. Notably, in 2021, the EU entered a contract to acquire 1.1 billion doses from Pfizer and BioNTech.
Despite the pandemic easing, countries committed to vaccine purchases, and attempts to donate surplus vaccines faced challenges due to declining demand and supply chain issues.
[With information sourced from Politico]
