15m COVID-19 vaccine doses discarded in US since March: report

Pharmacies and state governments in the United States have thrown away at least 15.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines since March 1, said an article published in NBC News, quoting government data.

It is a far larger number than previously known and still probably an undercount, said the article.

"It's really tragic that we have a situation where vaccines are being wasted while lots of African countries have not had even 5 percent of their populations vaccinated," Sharifah Sekalala, an associate professor of global health law at England's University of Warwick, was quoted as saying.

"A lot of the global south is unvaccinated. The African continent is still below 10 percent, and that's just a huge inequality and it's really problematic," Sekalala added.

Wasted vaccine doses topped 4 million in June and July in the United States, according to the data quoted by NBC News. Though demand for vaccines in the country rose last month as cases and hospitalizations surged due to the Delta variant, still at least 3.8 million doses were wasted in August.