By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

DESPITE a noted drop in vaccine uptake for the past several months, health officials have not thrown away any doses due to being granted shelf life extensions by international regulators.

Ministry of Health and Wellness Vaccine Committee co-chair Dr Gina Archer yesterday told The Tribune the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has advised that vaccines should not be binned unless there is absolute certainty the jabs have expired.

Last month, Dr Danny Davis, co-chair of the National Vaccine Consultative Committee, warned that Pfizer vaccines that were due to expire at the end of this month may have had to be thrown away if vaccine uptake did not increase soon. He added that a batch of vaccines were expected to expire at the end of August.

According to Dr Archer, a batch of Pfizer vaccines will expire this October.

However, she added, this could change as every two to three months new data is released advising that the shelf life of vaccines is being extended. She pointed to an advisory from the CDC “that you should not throw them out unless you’re absolutely certain they have expired”.

Dr Archer said: “No vaccines have been thrown out. The extended expiry dates are constantly being adjusted based on the outcomes of stability studies. Currently the extended shelf lives have moved from six months to nine months.”

Dr Archer went on to note the decline in vaccine uptake compared to the initial introduction.

“Well, let me give it to you this way: There has been a drop off in the uptake of vaccines on the whole - Pfizer and the AstraZeneca. Right now we don’t even have AstraZeneca in country, but we do approximately 1,500 vaccinations a week.”

According to the government’s vaccine tracker, 167,073 people have been fully vaccinated and 156,947 people have received at least one dose of a vaccine as of June 4.

This total includes Bahamians and residents who were fully vaccinated aboard and registered on the vax.gov.bs platform.

The tracker said there were 348,575 vaccines administered.

The tracker indicated total doses administered included extended and booster doses. Extended and booster doses do not contribute to the count of fully vaccinated persons or persons with at least one dose.