By Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – Last month, more than 100,000,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccinations were rejected by poorer countries. This was mainly because they are rapidly expiring, according to a UNICEF official.

This figure illustrates the challenges of vaccination, despite increasing supplies of jabs. COVAX is getting close to 1 billion vaccines for nearly 150 countries.

Etleva Kadilli (director of UNICEF’s Supply Division), told the European Parliament that more than 100 million applications had been turned down in December.

According to her, the primary reason that people were rejected was receiving doses with an extremely short shelf life.

Kadilli explained that the shortages of storage space have led to poor nations having to wait for supplies, as well as a dearth in vaccine refrigerators.

UNICEF didn’t immediately respond to my query regarding how many of the doses had been rejected.

Not only are there rejected doses but many other items that remain unutilized in the storage units of poorer countries.

UNICEF has released data showing that about 681 million doses of the vaccine are not being used in 90 nations. This is according to CARE (a charity) which retrieved the numbers from a public database.

CARE cited UNICEF data to show that more than 30 countries, which include large states like Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are poorer than the rest.

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According to GAVI data, the GAVI alliance which manages the program, COVAX is the global co-led programme. It has delivered 989 millions COVID-19 vaccinations to 144 nations.

COVAX supplies doses to many poorer countries, but it isn’t the only supplier. Some countries either purchase their doses from COVAX or use another regional procurement programme.

Due to a shortage of vaccines, the supply of vaccines for poor nations has been extremely limited. However, wealthier countries have secured most of those doses starting in December 2020.

The shipments of vaccines have increased by an exponential amount in the past quarter due to generous donations from wealthy countries.

WHO data show that 67% had received full vaccinations in countries richer than theirs, while only 8% of those in less developed nations were vaccinated.

Many countries were not prepared for the rapid pace of supplies.

Kadilli stated that there are countries pushing for doses which are available in the quarter of 2022.

Three-quarters of EU’s 15,000,000 doses that were refused were AstraZeneca shots (NASDAQ) with an expiration date of 10 weeks, as per UNICEF slides shown to EU legislators.

COVAX said that the “major problem,” as COVAX senior officials stated, was wealthy countries providing vaccines having a very short shelf-life. This has led to a lot of wasted doses.

Reuters reported that in Nigeria, up to one million vaccines had expired without having been used in December.