Switzerland: They will destroy more than 10 million expired doses of Moderna vaccines

Swiss authorities are being forced to destroy 10.3 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine that expired earlier this week, the Swiss health ministry said Saturday.

The ministry explained that it had no other options as the deadline for the tranches passed on Wednesday, the Keystone-ATS news agency reported, confirming information from the Beobachter news website that the tranches to be destroyed cost the public some 280 million Swiss francs (294 million euros).

In addition, 2.5 million doses remain stored at an army logistics base and another 7.8 million are kept in a warehouse in Belgium, the ministry said, stressing that its vaccine supply strategy from the beginning was to order more doses than ,what they needed for the 8.7 million inhabitants of Switzerland.

The country thus ordered doses of vaccines from various pharmaceutical companies, to avoid its dependence on vaccines that could prove ineffective, supply problems and breach of contractual obligations.

In June, the news website Swissinfo estimated that Switzerland has a surplus of 38 million doses of COVID vaccines, which are expected to expire before the end of the year.

The ministry assured that around 3.5 million doses of Moderna’s new vaccine will be available when Switzerland begins its next booster dose campaign in October.

Switzerland, which has recorded 13,556 patient deaths due to complications of COVID-19 since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic in its territory, has fully vaccinated about 70% of its population.

RES-EMP

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