With millions of Americans waiting for their chance to get the coronavirus vaccine, Associated Press report that a lucky few are getting bumped to the front of the line as clinics scramble to get rid of extra, perishable doses at the end of the day. It is often a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
Sometimes people who just happen to be near a clinic at closing time are offered leftover shots that would otherwise be thrown away. Sometimes health workers go out looking for recipients. Some places keep waiting lists and draw names at random.
“One of the nurses said I should go buy a lottery ticket right now,” said Jesse Robinson, outside a Nashville, Tennessee, clinic this week where the 22-year-old was picked from a 15,000-name list for a shot. “I’m not going to question it too much. Just glad it was me.”
David MacMillan was grabbing ingredients for a coconut chickpea dish at a Giant grocery store in Washington when a woman in a lab coat from the in-store pharmacy came up to him and his friend.
“I got two doses of the Moderna vaccine. The pharmacy is closing in 10 minutes. Do you want them?” MacMillan, 31, recalled the woman saying. “I thought, ‘Let’s go for it.”’
After MacMillan posted a video of his experience on TikTok, the supermarket chain was inundated for days with calls and people hanging around, hoping to score a shot. It has become one of the most unusual quirks in the often uneven, monthlong rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines.
Once a vial is thawed from the deep freeze and, even more so, once its seal is punctured and the first dose is drawn, those administering the vaccine are in a race to use it up before it spoils – even if it means giving shots to those who don’t fit into the priority list.
While it may be unsettling to see a 20-something getting a shot while an 90-year-old woman in a nursing home is still waiting, public health experts say getting a dose into someone’s arm, anyone’s arm, is better than throwing it away.
Waste is common in global inoculation campaigns, with millions of doses of flu shots trashed each year. By one World Health Organization estimate, more than half of all vaccines are thrown away because they were mishandled, unclaimed or expired. The coronavirus rollout appears to have bucked the trend.
Though federal data is not available, health authorities in various jurisdictions contacted by The Associated Press reported very little waste beyond a few notable cases of doses that were accidentally or deliberately spoiled.
In Chicago’s Cook County, Illinois, the health department reported just three of 87,750 doses were wasted, each accidentally spilled by staff. In Ohio, officials said 165 of 459,000 doses distributed as of last week were damaged or lost in transit, thrown away because of vaccine no-shows, or otherwise wasted. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Houston and other cities and states all have similarly reported tiny fractions of waste.
“As far as I’m concerned, vaccinate anyone but the dog,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University.