More than 4,000 people who received vaccinations at the Mass Vaccination Center at the Oakland Coliseum on Monday may have received the wrong dose, according to a new report. According to officials, the overdose may not lead to problems with COVID immunity, but it does mean that the syringes used result in at least 1,000 wasted doses per day.
KTVU announced the news on the issue on Wednesday after medical staff working at the Coliseum site contacted the station out of concern because the story had been swept under the rug. At issue are some inexpensive syringes that are said to leave 0.05 to 0.1 ml of vaccine fluid when their plunger is fully inflated. Before site staff realized the problem Monday afternoon, about 4,200 people went through and probably received less than the optimal dose of 0.3 ml of vaccine – somewhere between 0.2 ml and 0.25 ml, depending on how hard the person which it applied pressed the piston.
The problem was apparently corrected by the fact that the syringes were slightly more filled, but this means that the vaccine is still wasted – and there are slightly more expensive, spring-loaded syringes that can be used instead, say medical staff.
KTVU says the authorities of the California Office of Emergency Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the agencies that run the Coliseum website, did not find out about the matter until KTVU notified them Tuesday. As KTVU reports, “Brian Ferguson, spokesman for Cal OES, said the whistleblowers brought the issue to light, high-level meetings were held Tuesday afternoon between their agencies, as well as the State Department of Public Health, US Health and Human Services. and Pfizer., to determine what to do. ‘
Ferguson said all parties involved had concluded that the remaining vaccine in the syringes was ‘negligible’, and that individuals who had been vaccinated did not need to be informed about the issue. Pfizer says that unless individuals have received less than half the optimal amount, their level of immunity should not be affected.
Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccination at UC Berkeley Public Health, tells KTVU that the jury is not yet scientifically aware of the impact of a lesser first dose. And he suggests that those who may have received the smaller amount will want to consider getting a boost shot in a few months.
The issue of wasted vaccine when we talk about this scale of wastage is nevertheless a major cause for concern at a time when the vaccine supply is still lagging behind. Just this week, we learned that Sutter Health had to postpone 40,000 appointments for second doses due to delayed inventory. And restaurant workers in the provinces of San Francisco and Alameda are scrambling to get vaccinations as restaurants reopen for indoor eateries, but due to low inventory, most of them could not get appointments, while teachers also compete and get priority codes.
If each of these syringes leaves 0.05 to 0.1 ml of vaccine left each time a shot is administered, and if we assume that more than 7,000 shots are given each day, it will mean that more than 1,750 shots are given daily going to waste. as long as the website continues to use these cheap syringes.
One of KTVU’s sources who fire shots at the site says they now use a mixture of cheap sprayers and the less wasteful spring loads.
Related: SF teachers and restaurant workers now compete to make vaccinations for vaccines, while teachers get first time
Photo: Dennis Klicker