Getting More People Vaccinated Against COVID-19 Means Wasting Doses

CDC has said vaccination sites should not miss a chance to administer COVID-19 vaccine doses to any individual, even if it means the remaining doses in a vial will be discarded, reports the Wall Street Journal (May 21, Wernau, Abbott). As part of the nation's effort to reach unvaccinated people, authorities are sending vaccines to smaller settings like physician's offices and pop-up clinics. In general, the more doses a vial contains, the more likely doses may be wasted. Johnson & Johnson vials contain five doses, Pfizer-BioNTech vials contain six, and Moderna vials contain about 10 doses, but the company was recently permitted to begin filling vials with as many as 15 doses. Once a vial is punctured, the doses must be used within 12 hours for the Moderna vaccine, six hours for Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine, and two to six hours for Johnson & Johnson's depending on how they are stored.