- Japan has obtained 144 million Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doses, but can use only 120 million.
- The health minister said the country did not have enough special syringes to take the sixth dose out of each vial.
- The US and the EU are also scrambling to get enough low sprayers for dead space.
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Millions of doses of Pfizer coronavirus vaccines are likely to be discarded in Japan because the country does not have enough special syringes to extract the final dose from each vial, according to Kyodo News.
Pfizer’s two-shot vaccine is sold in vials containing six doses, but to withdraw the sixth dose, a special syringe called a low dead space syringe is used.
And because Japan does not have enough of the special syringes, it will probably only be able to withdraw five doses per vial, the health minister said.
“The syringes used in Japan can only draw five doses. We will use all the syringes that can draw six doses, but of course that will not be enough as more shots will be fired,” Norihisa Tamura said on Tuesday. Kyodo News.
A coronavirus ward at Sakura General Hospital in Oguchi, Japan, on February 10, 2021.
Carl Court / Getty Images
According to Kyodo News, Japan announced last month that it had entered into an agreement with Pfizer to buy 144 million shots – but without enough syringes to withdraw final doses, the country will have to revise the number of available doses to 120 million.
The change in estimate means that 60 million people would be able to be vaccinated with the Pfizer shot in Japan, compared to the original 72 million people.
The Japanese government has requested medical equipment manufacturers to increase production of these special syringes, Kyodo News reports.
Read more: What comes next for COVID-19 vaccines? Here’s the latest on 11 leading programs.
The shortage of syringes is not a unique problem for Japan. The US and EU have also been working to get enough dead space syringes to extract the full amount of doses from Pfizer’s vaccination vials.
Last month, Sweden froze payments to Pfizer to determine if it was charging too much for the vaccines. They entered into an agreement based on the fact that there were five doses in each vial, but when Pfizer realized that a sixth dose could be withdrawn, the pharmaceutical company adjusted the cost accordingly.
But just like Japan, Sweden has said it does not have enough special syringes to take all six doses out of each vial, and believes it should only be charged for five.
The Japanese prime minister said on Wednesday that the country’s vaccination program would begin next week, with Channel 10,000 to 20,000 health workers at the forefront.
After a study to verify the safety of the vaccine, Japan plans to start vaccinating all people aged 65 and older from the end of April, according to Kyodo News.
Japanese residents between the ages of 16 and 59 expect not to receive their vaccine shots until around July, when Tokyo hopes to hold the postponed Olympics, reports The Guardian.