MANILA, Philippines — High vaccine wastage and low vaccination and booster rates marred the government’s P74.68-million COVID-19 National Vaccination Program (CNVP), which was implemented from 2021 to 2022, the Commission on Audit (COA) said in its latest report.
“Gaps in vaccination implementation resulted in 68 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine wastages exceeding the acceptable limit,” the COA said in its performance audit report on the government’s implementation of CNVP pursuant to Republic Act 11525 or the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Act.
The COA, in its report uploaded on its website last Dec. 23, stated that its analysis of the data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed that a total of 251,774,460 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were procured by and donated to the government as of Sept. 8, 2023. Of these, 27.28 percent, or 68,681,445 doses, were already reported as “wastage” as of Nov. 30, 2024.
The COA said the wastage exceeded the limit set by the international health organization Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, which recommended that a country must aim to limit its vaccine wastage to 25 percent in the first year of the vaccination program’s implementation and reduce it to 15 percent in the third year.
The audit body said that of the 68,681,445 wasted COVID-19 vaccines, 36,949,355 doses or 53.80 percent came from donations while 17,113,220 doses or 24.92 percent were procured by the national government.
The COA also noted that 6,090,365 doses (8.87 percent) were wasted by local government units (LGUs), and 4,337,620 doses (6.51 percent) were wasted by private organizations. The source of the remaining 4,055,282 (5.90 percent) doses of wasted vaccines was not indicated in the DOH data.
The figure was far higher than the 7,035,161 vials of COVID-19 vaccines, which were earlier reported as wasted in the COA’s annual audit report on the DOH for 2023.
In its performance audit report on the CNVP, the COA stated that the primary reason for vaccine wastage was expiration or exceeding the shelf life, which accounted for 83.49 percent of the overall wastage, while operational factor constituted 14.78 percent of the total wastage.
The COA said among the reasons cited by the DOH for the high vaccine wastage were refusal of several LGUs to accept deliveries due to the short remaining shelf life of the COVID-19 vaccines, slow movement of the vaccines, and late arrival to the country of some vaccines. — Evelyn Macairan