Health let 39 million vaccines against Covid-19 expire – 03/14/2023 – Health

The Ministry of Health lost at least 38.9 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19, valued at around BRL 2 billion.

Of this total, around 2 million units were discarded and 31 million are sent for incineration. Another 5.9 million would still be in transit.

Health members blame the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) for the accumulation of doses. They also state that they are studying donating vaccines to other countries as one of the ways to avoid further losses.

The folder also says that 5 million units expire in the next 90 days. And that another 15 million immunizers can be discarded in the next six months.

States and municipalities still tend to reject batches with a short expiration date. Precisely because of the risk of the product expiring.

Current Secretary of Health and Environment Surveillance at the Ministry of Health, Ethel Maciel said that the Bolsonaro administration did not even share data on stocks with the team of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) during the transition of government.

“We got a government with a stock of expired vaccines and to expire, while those we needed had no stock. There wasn’t even a contract [encomendando as doses] in the case of pediatric and bivalent vaccines”, he said.

“If it weren’t for denialism, these doses would not be in stocks. If there had been an effort, as we are doing now, with educational campaigns, alignment with municipal and state managers, these vaccines would not have won “, added the secretary.

According to the ministry, about 2 million doses expired in 2021. They are lots donated by the United States, already incinerated.

Another 9.9 million vaccines expired in 2022. As of January 2023, another 27.1 million immunizers for Covid expired.

When contacted, former Minister of Health Marcelo Queiroga said that his secretaries were responsible for controlling stocks.

“Vaccines were acquired due to the Brazilian population, as we know, adherence to vaccines decreased after the sanitary control of the disease worldwide. From what I was informed, most of the expired vaccines are from Fiocruz”, stated Queiroga.

In a note, Health states that “the current management of the Ministry of Health has faced [ao assumir o governo] with a scenario of 27.1 million doses of vaccines against Covid-19 without enough time for distribution and use”.

A Sheet received, via the Access to Information Law (LAI), data on the 33 million doses already discarded or sent for incineration.

Of this group, about 13 million immunizers, valued at BRL 415 million, expired by the end of 2022. The rest, more than 20 million units, purchased for BRL 740 million, expired in 2023.

The table sent by the Ministry of Health does not detail whether all vaccines were lost because of the end of validity or if, for example, a batch failed quality tests.

The data sent by the folder does not confirm the vaccine model that has expired. From the batch numbers, it is possible to verify that at least doses of Coronavac and AstraZeneca / Fiocruz have been or will be discarded.

The transitional government’s Health team treated the stockpile of vaccines about to expire as a kind of cursed inheritance. In the final report, the group said that there were “a large number of vaccines with a very short expiry date, due to failure in planning, monitoring and management of stocks”.

Since 2018, information on Ministry of Health stocks, including expired products, has been confidential. A Sheet made several requests for access during the Bolsonaro administration, all of which were denied.

Lula’s team decided to share, for the time being, the lost stocks.

Secretary Ethel Maciel adds that the folder is concerned with the doses that expire in the next three months. “The others have a term of one year, six months, and we are not concerned with them because we are in this national movement for vaccination and several actions are being agreed upon”, she said.

Bolsonaro encouraged misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines. He even threatened to expose servers of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) who participated in the release of the application of doses in children.

Upon taking office, the current Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade, said that there was a “period of obscurantism of denial of science” during the previous administration.

Control bodies, in addition to SUS managers, made several warnings in the Bolsonaro administration about the risk of vaccines losing their validity.

As shown to Sheet in June 2021, audit documents from the TCU (Union Court of Auditors) pointed out the risk of Health losing about 28 million doses by August of that year.

Health had already allowed a stock valued at BRL 243 million of vaccines to expire, in addition to tests and other items, as also revealed by the Sheet, in 2021. Almost all products expired in the Bolsonaro administration.

TCU confirmed, in early March, that about 2 million doses of Covid vaccines donated by the United States were discarded.

The court ministers decided to impose a fine of BRL 1 million on reserve general Ridauto Ribeiro, former director of logistics for Health, and Rosana Leite, former extraordinary secretary for combating Covid-19, on the grounds that the accept a donation of short-term doses.

The donated lots arrived in Brazil about a month before the end of their useful life.

Sought, Ridauto said that all doses received during his management were kept in “perfect storage conditions”, “there having been no loss of Covid vaccines due to damage or improper storage”.

“As for the decision to acquire or receive vaccines (and the quantities to be acquired), or the use of this material, that is, the decision to send it or not to the states and DF, that was not up to the body I headed, the Dlog”, he added. He declared that “competent managers” should be responsible for purchases and for the period in which the doses were stored.

Rosana Leite was contacted, but did not appear.