It's unclear how many doses have wound up in the trash because many hospitals aren't reporting these numbers for fear of retribution, a leading public health doctor said.
“This kind of thing is pretty rampant,” [Dr. Ashish] Jha said. “I have personally heard stories like this from dozens of physician friends in a variety of different states. Hundreds, if not thousands, of doses are getting tossed across the country every day. It’s unbelievable.”
Jha said the ER doctor whose story he laid out in a Twitter thread this week asked to not be identified, but his story, seen by thousands of people, resonated with other medical professionals frustrated by rules and regulations that they say are making it harder to get more Americans vaccinated.
Why is this happening? Covid-19 vaccines have a short shelf life once they are thawed out for use, Jha said. And because of federal and state mandates, hospitals and other health care providers would rather risk a dose going bad than give it to somebody who isn’t scheduled to get a shot.
At the same time, states like Massachusetts now have rules requiring hospitals to report the number of vaccine doses that have been discarded, Jha said.
“The problem is that hospitals that do report this get pilloried in the press for wasting vaccines,” Jha said. “So, many hospitals are not reporting and this is happening across the country.”
