President Donald Trump’s Dept. of Veterans Affairs is throwing away extra coronavirus vaccine found in vials from Pfizer that are designed to provide five inoculations.
Why?
“Inventory monitoring.”
Just one day after the doctors and nurses started inoculating Americans with the desperately-awaited coronavirus vaccine, reports started coming in that many vials, which hold five injections, had enough extra for one or two more. Two more injections from a five-injection vial is literally an extra 40%, which means up to an extra 40% of Americans could be protected from the deadly disease earlier than first expected.
With inventory of the vaccine low, and delays expected after President Donald Trump passed on purchasing millions of more doses from Pfizer, the extra vaccine is literally a lifesaver.
Except to President Donald Trump’s Dept. of Veterans Affairs.
An internal memo obtained by Radio.com (formerly CBS Radio) reveals the VA “is planning to discard additional doses of the coronavirus vaccine from Pfizer vials that arrived overfilled, despite Food and Drug Administration guidance to use all doses during the public health emergency.”
Officials at Veterans Affairs say they “argued using the extra doses could jeopardize future allocations of the vaccine.”
“VA officials don’t want medical staff to administer more than the five doses per vial, and any additional doses should be ‘discarded,’ according to a memo obtained by Connecting Vets, which was sent to Veterans Health Administration pharmacy chiefs and others at the department Thursday morning.”
But the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates vaccines, has publicly directed medical professionals to use all the vaccine available.
“CDC is requiring strict inventory monitoring of this product,” the VA memo reads. “Drawing extra doses will make the data questionable.”
“Sending what appears to be inaccurate data to CDC may jeopardize VA’s ability to get additional allocations of product in the future,” the memo, from Jennifer L. Zacher, adds.
Nearly 4000 Americans died from COVID-19 just yesterday. Over 310,000 Americans have already been killed by the coronavirus.