Two Portland hospital systems have dumped more than three dozen coronavirus vaccine doses, even though Oregon’s top health official said his agency does not know vaccines are being wasted.
Oregon Health & Science University lost 15 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine after one vial broke and two were improperly mixed, a hospital spokesman said. Legacy Health lost 27 doses when they could not find health workers to take excess vaccination, a Legacy spokesman said.
And yet, the director of the Oregon Health Authority was unaware that any doses had been lost in Oregon.
“We have not received any reports of spoilage from sites that administer the vaccine, and that is something we keep a record of,” director Patrick Allen said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Vaccines are handled and administered in a proper and timely manner.”
The agency said it inquired about the wasted doses of The Oregonian / OregonLive and then confirmed it with OHSU and Legacy, despite Legacy saying the information had been reported to the state earlier as needed.
“We will follow up and make sure this waste is properly documented,” Health Authority spokesman Jonathan Modie said in an email.
It is unclear whether other doses were wasted in Oregon.
The wasted doses reflect only 0.07% of the 55,000 vaccines administered so far in Oregon. And the lost doses were offset by the unexpected extra doses found by health care workers in overcrowded Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination vials.
But the discrepancy between the reported data from hospitals and the statements of health officials points to further evidence of growth pains, as the state is criticized for the slow vaccination rate and outlines plans to vaccinate 12,000 people a day soon.
The Oregon health authority said a vaccine could be expected to spoil in the process of such a massive vaccination project. Nothing yet indicates that vaccines are wasted due to negligence, the agency said.
“We believe our healthcare system partners manage their vaccine responsibly and do everything in their power to reduce waste,” Modie said. “We have seen no evidence that vaccine is being handled responsibly.”
Heritage has lost doses because Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine sometimes contains one or two doses per vial, spokesman Brian Terrett said. This meant that Legacy workers would go through the list to shoot people before the vials they unpacked ran out.
But because the doses measured an expiration date in hours, not days, doses are lost if no one can be found to be taking a vaccine. Finding someone like that can be a challenge, Terrett said, because people need to be able to take time if they are experiencing side effects.
“If we had more doses than expected, it affected our ability to plan staff effectively for their vaccination,” Terrett said.
The hospital system reported its lost doses to a state-wide substance vaccination system, Terrett said.
OHSU spokeswoman Tamara Hargens-Bradley lost 15 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. One five-dose vial broke, Hargens-Bradley said, and two more vials containing a total of ten doses were mixed incorrectly.
Hargens-Bradley did not say whether the hospital reported the lost doses to the state.
It is possible that OHSU and Legacy, as required, reported the wasted doses to a state-wide detection system, but that the health authority was not aware of it.
“We are going to check (the state’s vaccination tracking system) and follow up where necessary with these providers, and with any providers who have reported such losses,” Modie said.
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– Fedor Zarkhin
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