Riverside County Public Health says ‘a very small number’ of COVID vaccines go unused
COVID-19 vaccines are one of the nation's most precious commodities right now. But there have been reports across the country that have had expired doses gone to waste.
Riverside County is racing to reach herd immunity from COVID-19. Every drop of the vaccine is valuable as they really could mean the difference between life and death.
News Channel 3’s Dani Romero worked to find out if any potentially life saving shots may have gone unused.
As thousands of available slots still remain this week, we wanted to know how many vaccines doses may have gone unused.
“The actual number of doses that is wasted is very small," said Shane Reichardt, Senior Public Information Specialist for the County of Riverside Emergency Management Department.
Reichardt confirmed that less than two tenths of one percent of all doses the county has received since the beginning of our vaccination efforts have been wasted.
Shane Reichardt of Riverside Emergency Management explained that they try to fill all appointments.
“Anything that is not used in each day at the clinic is returned to a centralized location and stored for the next day or next use," said Reichardt.
We followed up by asking “do we know how many are going back per day?”
“It varies every single day," said Reichardt. "Some days it's next to nothing and other days it may be more.”
County Health officials told us they are working hard to ensure every dose is put to use.
“It's kept on dry ice in a lot of cases brought out to that location," said Reichardt. "It's not thawed until they know that there's an arm for that dose to go into.”
The county tries to use additional thawed doses as soon as they can.
“In Palm Springs, we were able to extend into the evening and do walk-ins and that allowed us to be able to use that and make sure that nothing is going to waste," said Reichardt. "We've been trying to do everything possible.”
Still, there are reasons doses might be thrown away.
"It didn't look right to the nurse that was looking at it," said Reichardt. "If something in the dose didn't look right it may have been wasted that way. So the waste is actually kept to a very small number. “
According to the California Department of Public Health, about 0.01% of doses in the state are deemed unusable. The state works closely with clinics to ensure they have the training and equipment needed to efficiently administer doses while minimizing waste.
A spokesperson for Eisenhower Health told News Channel 3 "a little over 100 vaccines" has gone unused from when the hospital began vaccinating patients back in December with their first clinic.
