OTAWA – Health Canada says nearly 1.5 million doses of nationally available COVID-19 vaccines have expired since January.
That includes more than 420,000 doses of Moderna Spikevax that expired on Tuesday.  These installments had already seen their expiration date delayed by two months.
The government says this is a relatively new issue because installment deliveries were in line with demand until the end of last year.  But vaccine absorption has slowed even as governments and public health authorities are urging people to take booze treatment.
More than 80 percent of Canadians are considered fully vaccinated, with 57 percent of adults and 15 percent of teens receiving a third dose.
Some provinces are extending fourth doses to high-risk populations, and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization this week issued more urgent advice for younger adults and teens to take their third dose as the sixth wave of COVID-19 continues to rise.
The intake is still significantly lower than it was, falling from a maximum of 600,000 doses a day in June to 250,000 in January and about 30,000 a day in the last month.
To date, less than 2% of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine supply has expired, although this figure does not include doses expired after dispatch to provinces and territories.
Last fall, a Canadian Press survey of provincial governments on missed doses found that at least 120,000 doses shipped to provinces had expired, but the data did not include numbers from Ontario, which declined to answer the question.
Dr Srinivas Murthy, an infectious disease specialist at the University of British Columbia, said losing certain doses by the end was normal in vaccine campaigns.
“You distribute a good in all parts of the country with varying intake rates and different desires for a particular product during this process, so some products will receive their expiration date,” he said.
Canada has donated only 15 million of the 38 million installments it promised to share from its own supplies, but demand for them has also fallen this year.  The COVAX vaccine-sharing alliance, which distributes the most donations, has slowed its demands in recent weeks as supplies have exceeded countries’ ability to receive arms doses.
Murthy said Canada should have done more earlier to facilitate vaccinations in lower-income countries, advocating for changes in licensing and manufacturing laws so that vaccines could be manufactured in more places.
These changes are now in the works, but Murthy said it did not take two years for that to happen.
Canada now has 18 million installments in its national reserve and the vast majority will expire within the next four months.  That includes 4,200 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine running out at the end of April, more than 900,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine ending in June and 3.1 million doses from a recent shipment of the new Novavax vaccine ending in late August.
Nearly 5.5 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for adults and teens will expire in July and August.  Another 8.2 million doses of Spikevax expire between May and October.
Provinces and territories still have between 10 and 12 million installments in their own reserves.
Health Canada said in a written statement that it is working to manage installments to limit expiration, including donating when possible and working with manufacturers to see if expired doses can still be used safely.
Health Canada has revised its expiration dates several times over the past year, as vaccine companies have been able to get better data on how long vaccines have remained viable.
The life of Pfizer was extended from six months to nine months last summer and Moderna from seven months to nine months in December.
This Canadian Press report was first published on April 13, 2022.