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Two Portland hospital systems dumped more than three dozen doses of the coronavirus vaccine even as Oregon’s top health official said his agency was unaware of any wasted vaccines.
Oregon Health & Science University lost 15 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine after one vial broke and two were mixed badly, a hospital spokesperson said. Legacy Health lost 27 doses when it could not find health workers to take the excess vaccine in the short time before it expired, a Legacy spokesperson said.
And yet, the director of the Oregon Health Authority did not seem to know that any doses had been lost in Oregon.
“We have not received any reports of deterioration from sites administering the vaccine, and this is something we are monitoring,” Director Patrick Allen said at a press conference on Tuesday. “Vaccines are handled and administered appropriately and in a timely manner.”
The agency said it learned of the wasted doses from The Oregonian / OregonLive and subsequently confirmed them with OHSU and Legacy, although Legacy said it previously reported the information to the state as required.
“We will follow up and make sure this waste is properly documented,” health officials spokesperson Jonathan Modie said in an email.
It is not known if other doses in Oregon were wasted.
The wasted doses only reflect 0.07% of the 55,000 vaccines administered so far in Oregon. And the doses lost were more than made up for by the unexpected extra doses that healthcare workers found in overfilled Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine vials.
But the disconnect between data reported by hospitals and statements from health officials points to even more evidence of growing pain as the state is criticized for being slow to vaccinate and describes plans to soon vaccinate 12,000 people a day.
The Oregon Health Authority said it was to be expected that some vaccines would spoil in the process of such a massive vaccination project. There is no indication yet that vaccines have been negligently wasted, the agency said.
“We believe our healthcare system partners are responsible for their vaccine management and doing everything they can to minimize waste,” Modie said. “We have seen no evidence that the vaccine is handled less responsibly.”
Legacy lost doses because Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine sometimes has one or two extra doses per vial, spokesman Brian Terrett said. That meant Legacy workers would go through the list of people who needed to be vaccinated before the vials they had unwrapped ran out.
But because the doses have an expiration date measured in hours, not days, the doses are wasted if someone cannot be found to take a vaccine. Finding such a person can be a challenge, Terrett said, because people need to be able to take time off if they experience side effects.
“Having more doses than we expected had an impact on our ability to effectively schedule staff for their vaccine,” Terrett said.
The hospital system reported its lost doses to a statewide vaccine tracking system, Terrett said.
OHSU pharmacists have lost 15 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, spokeswoman Tamara Hargens-Bradley said. One vial containing five doses broke, Hargens-Bradley said, and two other vials containing 10 combined doses were mixed incorrectly.
Hargens-Bradley did not say whether the hospital reported the lost doses to the state.
It is possible that OHSU and Legacy reported wasted doses to a statewide vaccine tracking system, as required, but the health authority was not aware of it.
“We will check (the state’s vaccine tracking system) and follow up as needed with these vendors and with any vendors who have reported such losses,” Modie said.
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– Fedor Zarkhin
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