Millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine have expired, and the shot is largely unavailable, despite an announcement in February that South Africa’s National Health Department was sitting on a stockpile of almost 30m doses.
At the time, writes Adele Baleta for Spotlight, in explaining the huge number of unused jabs, the department said vaccine uptake had been low due to decreasing cases, people’s erroneous perception that the pandemic was over, and hesitancy affected by vaccine disinformation.
National Department of Health spokesperson Foster Mohale confirmed that 7m Pfizer doses had expired but said they would not be disposed of. Instead, the manufacturers would test the vaccines to ensure continued safety and efficacy.
The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) will review the test results and, if satisfied that the vaccine will still work as well as data showed before, they will approve an extended shelf life.
The remaining estimated 23m Johnson and Johnson (J&J) vaccine doses are due to expire in 2024 and 2025.
“The expiry of a vaccine is not the same as the expiry date of food, which cannot be extended,” Mohale said, adding that the Pfizer vaccine had a short shelf life and that its expiry date had already been extended twice in the past. He said the testing should be done by June and the Pfizer shots should become available in July.
Responding to questions on the Department of Health’s hotline, an intern told an anxious caller: “Many people have phoned in stressing about travelling, emigrating, or getting vaccinated for the first time. We have been told there are very few sites that still have some stock. If people have had two Pfizer doses, they can boost with a J&J dose. However, if they have only had one Pfizer, they will have to wait.”
Frustration on social media regarding the issue also relates to the Health Department’s vaccination website being outdated and it being hard to find places to get vaccinated.
Risk ever present
On the WHO lifting the Covid-19 Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) earlier this month, Caprisa director Professor Salim Abdool Karim, writing in his updates blog, said: “We are still living in the midst of a pandemic with thousands of cases each day. Since SARS-CoV-2 is going to be with us for a long time, a pragmatic decision was needed as the pandemic emergency has been steadily receding and a new variant of concern has not emerged in 17 months.
“But the risk of a new variant of concern is ever-present, even if it is getting progressively smaller with time. The public is also tired of the pandemic and many have simply put it out of sight and out of mind.”
Kariem wrote that globally there were currently far more Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths each day than on the day (30 January 2020) that Covid-19 was initially declared a PHEIC.
“So, it (the WHO decision) was not based on the situation getting to a point pre-PHEIC. Waiting to reach that point may take many years or may never happen and so ending the PHEIC is a judgment call, taking many factors into consideration.”
‘Still with us’
Speaking at a recent webinar hosted by Internews, science writer David Quammen, who wrote a book called Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus, and before that, Spillover, said: “The coronavirus is still with us, it’s circulating worldwide among humans, and circulating also among whitetail deer, feral mink, and probably other wild mammals.”
He said efforts should be directed to approaching Covid-19 as a long-term cause of human illness, suffering, and death, not “a short-term catastrophe”.
He said laboratory techniques needed to be improved as well as manufacturing capacity for updated vaccines. Inequitable access to vaccines would also need to be solved. “We will need to dissolve vaccine reluctance and refusal – among the privileged but obdurate, and also among those historically ill-served by Western medicine – with better communication and education.”
Diagnostic testing needed to be maintained and not reduced, as well as the sequencing of genomes from patient samples to detect and trace new and immune-evasive variants, he said.
“We will need to prepare, not just for the next coming of SARS-CoV-2 … but also for the next coronavirus or influenza virus (more than likely H1N1) or other highly adaptive animal-borne virus that appears in humans, seemingly out of nowhere,” he said. “But they don’t come out of nowhere. They come from nature.”
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
With millions due to expire, govt urges booster jab take-up
DoH is stuck with high hopes and scores of millions of COVID-19 doses
Destroying millions of COVID jabs proof of mistakes and mismanagement
South Africans still dying but COVID vaccine drive slows to a trickle