The Union Health Ministry’s insistence on limiting Covid vaccine wastage below 1%, according to vaccination experts and those directly involved in immunization efforts, is unrealistic, and setting such a target is even inimical to vax undesirable.

Experts warn that excessive pressure to reduce wastages could lead to data falsification, denial of vaccines to beneficiaries, or the use of vaccine doses more than four hours after they were opened.

This is especially true in rural areas where vaccination centres serve small populations and people travel long distances to get there. In India, the average waste of Covid vaccines is 6.3 percent, compared to the permitted waste of 10% set by the health ministry in January.

A check at the total doses delivered in vaccination centres across India at the end of each day reveals that the total doses delivered in a day are rarely in multiples of 10. Covid vaccinations come in ten-dose vials, so if a centre vaccinates 253 people in a day, at least seven doses are wasted.

Allowable wastage is set at varying amounts for different vaccines even in routine immunization. According to Dr Anish Sinha of the Indian Institute of Public Health. Gandhinagar, “Pentavalent, which has an open vial policy. can be used up to 28 days. So only 10% wastage is allowable. Vaccines for measles, rubella and rotavirus once opened have to be used within four hours.

Hence, 25% is the allowable wastage. In the case of BCG vaccine, which comes in a vial of 10 doses, only one dose is required for a child and so 50% is the allowable wastage. But for Covid vaccination being done in a campaign mode and meant for the whole population, the wastage can be brought down to about 5-6%.

The only foolproof way to stop wastage is to have single dose vials, which is not practical. Multi dose vials are cheaper and occupy less cold chain space, but there will be wastage.” He went on to say that the allowable wastage for vaccination centres in urban regions and rural or hilly areas may not be the same.

If just two dosages were wasted each centre every day on average, that would amount to 90,000 each day, or over 1 crore over the course of four months. With about 22 crore doses provided by the end of May, that’s close to 5% of the total. Although one crore doses lost may appear to be a large number, this simple calculation demonstrates why striving for less than 1% wastage may be unrealistic.