Tens of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines will likely soon expire due to a failure to manage an oversupply of doses, costing taxpayers an estimated $1 billion, according to Canada's auditor general.."We found that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was unsuccessful in its efforts to minimize vaccine wastage," Auditor General Karen Hogan wrote in the report..Hogan gave the PHAC and Public Services and Procurement Canada praise when it came to securing 169 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for the country, at a cost of more than $5 billion. But when it came to managing the supply, the auditor general report found the government did an unsatisfactory job..A total of 84.1 million injections were given to Canadians, while 15.3 million were donated to other countries. About 13.6 million doses expired while awaiting donation to other countries, while an additional 21.7 million are awaiting donation to other countries could soon expire..Another 29.7 million doses are sitting unused in federal, provincial, and territorial inventories..The government was warned ahead of time there was a risk of vaccines being wasted if it purchased an excess supply from pharmaceutical companies..The report noted that there were delays in implementing the information technology system that the PHAC had to track the distribution and use of vaccine doses. This made managing vaccine inventories more difficult.."Although some provinces and territories consistently reported to the agency, the agency was unable to obtain complete data from most," said the report. ."This meant that the status of these doses was unknown and reduced the agency’s ability to predict supply needs and plan for donations.".Another issue was that when the pandemic began in 2020, PHAC did not have regulations or finalized agreements with the provinces and territories stating what public health surveillance information to share and how to share it.."By the end of our audit period, the agency had not received permission from all provinces and territories to share detailed case‑level information on vaccine safety with Health Canada, vaccine companies, and the World Health Organization," said the report. ."Data sharing will continue to be important as new vaccines are developed and manufactured, including in Canada, to keep Canadians safe."
