Thousands Of Tennessee's Vaccine Shots Wound Up In Garbage Last Month

At a time when the COVID-19 vaccine distribution was disrupted due to the snowstorm that affected much of the country, health officials said over 2,400 doses were wasted in a Tennessee county over the last month.

This comes after the Tennessee Department of Health launched an investigation following a report that over 1,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were discarded due to expiration at Shelby County Health Department.

The Tennessee department confirmed that a total of 2,400 doses were wasted in seven separate expiration incidents since Feb. 3 in Shelby County.

One of the reasons for the expiration was the winter storm that delayed the inoculation drive, according to The Hill. However, Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey said in a press conference the majority of the wastage was not weather-related.

Piercey also noted the issues date back to Feb. 3 and included multiple incidents of spoiled doses, insufficient record-keeping, and no formal process for management of soon-to-expire vaccines, the Associated Press reported.

An investigation into the Shelby County Health Department’s handling of vaccine inventory is ongoing.

The Tennessee Department of Health also found Shelby County Health Department had 51,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in inventory. Piercey said some inventory is expected to plan ahead. According to their calculations, the county health department should have had about 20,000 doses in inventory. But they had an excess of 30,000 doses.

These doses were not expired, and the earliest expiration date of these excess doses is March 6, she added.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee expressed disappointment over the wasted doses in Shelby County, but said swift action was taken as soon as the issue was discovered.

The actions taken after the findings include deploying Tennessee Department of Health personnel at Shelby County Health Department for technical assistance and monitoring of their pharmacy operation. The current inventory of COVID-19 vaccines has also been distributed to community partners for immediate administration.

Piercey assured in the press conference Shelby County will continue getting the same allocation of doses, but they will be sent to other partners like the City of Memphis, as well as hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics for distribution.

This is not the first time COVID-19 vaccines were wasted in the U.S. Last month, over 16,000 doses went to waste before they could be administered to residents in Michigan and Maine. The vaccines were ruined due to storage and delivery issues.