Canada to throw out 13.6M doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, Health News, ET HealthWorld

Ottawa: Canada goes to throw out about 13.6 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine as a result of it could not discover any takers for it both at dwelling or overseas. Canada signed a contract with AstraZeneca in 2020 to get 20 million doses of its vaccine, and a couple of.3 million Canadians acquired at the very least one dose of it, largely between March and June 2021.

Following issues within the spring of 2021 about uncommon however probably deadly blood clots from AstraZeneca, Canada targeted on utilizing its ample provides of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna,

In July 2021, Canada promised to donate the remainder of its procured provide, about 17.7 million doses. But in an announcement Tuesday, Health Canada mentioned that regardless of efforts to satisfy that pledge, 13.6 million doses have expired and should be thrown out.

“Due to limited demand for the vaccine and recipient country challenges with distribution and absorption, they were not accepted?” the assertion mentioned.

In all, Canada donated 8.9 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine – 4.8 millon doses from its major provide and 4.1 million doses that it purchased from the COVAX vaccine-sharing program.

About 85 per cent of Canadians are thought-about absolutely vaccinated, in contrast with 61 per cent of the world’s inhabitants, and simply 16 per cent of individuals residing on this planet’s poorest nations.