Japan to throw away millions of doses of Pfizer due to lack of syringes

• Japan has secured 144 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, but may be able to use just 120 million.
• The country lacks enough special syringes to extract the sixth dose from each vial, said the health minister.
• The US and the EU are also struggling to get enough low dead space syringes.
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Millions of doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine are likely to be thrown away in Japan because the country does not have enough special syringes to extract the final dose from each vial, according to Kyodo News.

The Pfizer double vaccine is sold in bottles containing six doses, but the sixth dose extraction requires a special syringe called a low dead space syringe.

And since Japan does not have enough of these special syringes, it will probably only be able to extract five doses per bottle, said its health minister.

“Syringes used in Japan can only take five doses. We will use all the syringes we have that can take six doses, but, of course, it will not be enough as more injections are administered, ”said Norihisa Tamura on Tuesday, according to Kyodo News.

According to Kyodo News, Japan announced last month that it had made an agreement with Pfizer to buy 144 million doses – but without enough syringes to extract the final doses, the country will have to revise the number of doses delivered to 120 millions.

This change in estimate means that 60 million people could be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine in Japan, compared to the original 72 million.

The Japanese government has asked medical device manufacturers to increase the production of these special syringes, Kyodo News reported.

Read More: What’s next for COVID-19 vaccines? Here are the 11 most recent programs.

The lack of syringes is not a problem unique to Japan. The United States and the EU have also been working to obtain enough dead space syringes to extract the full amount of doses from Pfizer vaccine bottles.

Last month, Sweden froze payments to Pfizer to find out if it was being overcharged for vaccines. They had made a deal based on the existence of five doses in each bottle, but when Pfizer realized that a sixth dose could be extracted, the pharmaceutical company updated the cost based on that.

But, like Japan, Sweden said it did not have enough special syringes to remove all six doses from each vial and felt it should only be charged for five.

Japan’s prime minister said on Wednesday that the country’s vaccination program would begin next week, starting with 10,000 to 20,000 frontline health workers, according to Channel News Asia.

After a study to verify the vaccine’s safety, Japan plans to start inoculating all people aged 65 and over from the end of April, according to Kyodo News.

Japanese residents aged 16 to 59 years expect to not receive their vaccines until around July, when Tokyo hopes to hold the postponed Summer Olympics, The Guardian reported.