Short shelf-life of COVID-19 vaccines a problem

A serious problem has arisen with the supply of the COVID-19 vaccines to the poor countries, especially in Africa because of the short shelf-life of the vaccines, ranging from AstraZeneca’s six months to Johnson & Johnson’s two years when frozen, with Pfizers’ nine months and Moderna’s seven months shelf-life standing in the middle. As many of the European Union (EU) countries have donated the AstraZeneca vaccine to World Health Organisation (WHO) managed COVAX programme along with Gavi, the six-month shelf-life of the Anglo-Swedish drug manufacturer has become the focus. What is making the shelf-life issue complicated is the fact that most of the African countries are not able to use up the vaccine doses fast enough.

There are several reasons for this. First, the African countries do not have the vast administrative setup comprising qualified doctors and nurses and hospitals to carry out a large-scale vaccination programme. Secondly, there has been resistance to vaccines, and the donated vaccines remain unused, and their short shelf-life becomes an issue. AstraZeneca vaccine reaches the recipient countries with just two-and-a-half months shelf life because by the time it is cleared by the factory itself after the vaccine has been bottled. And the recipient countries are not able to use up the vaccines at a brisk pace. According to AstraZeneca, the vaccine is manufactured in far-flung factory units, and much time is lost in transporting the vaccine to the recipient countries. WHO had granted Serum Institute of India (SII), which is manufacturing the AstraZeneca vaccine nine months of shelf-life, but that of other AstraZeneca units remain six months. The issue gets complicated as the majority of the vaccine supplies are from AstraZeneca.

There is the other problem that most African countries do not have the cold storage facilities to keep the vaccines. As a result, millions of vaccine doses are going waste. African countries in general have been able to use only two-thirds of the donated vaccines. One-third of the vaccines going waste is a huge number.  And the usage rate gets to as low as 11 per cent in Burundi, 15 per cent in Congo, while it is one-third in Madagascar, Zambia, Somalia, and Uganda. The inefficient use of vaccine supplies means that not all the people who need to be vaccinated are not getting it, and even when the vaccine manufacturers are able to supply the required number of vaccine doses, they do not get used in time because of infrastructural hurdles.

The problem of the shelf-life could have been solved partially if there are vaccine manufacturer units in the user countries in Africa. The time taken to deliver the vaccines from the factory after due tests to the vaccinating unit of doctor and nurse in remote areas would have been shorter. Unfortunately, all of the drug companies manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccines are located in Europe and in the United States. Vaccine manufacturers in China, Russia and India have their own vaccines, but they are not available in the millions as required by the COVID-19-hit world. The West then has a monopoly in the production of vaccines because they are the only ones who can roll out the vaccines in the millions. Even they are unable to keep pace with the requirement of the world, where a majority of the countries are poor. The short shelf-life of the vaccines turns it into a crisis.  This leads to the issue central to the crisis: the decentralisation of manufacturing units in the places they are needed rather than in faraway places where there are not needed in the same numbers. The spread of manufacturing units will also make the world a more equitable place in terms of manufacturing facilities.