Information relating to unused Covid-19 vaccines: FOI release

Information requested

1. details of the amount of COVID vaccine that has been unused and then discarded over the past six months in the NHS Scotland COVID vaccination programme. 

2. Amount (doses) per week of vaccine given to people between 01/02/2021 and 30/7/2021.

3. Amount (doses) per week of vaccine not given to people and discarded 01/02/2021 and 30/7/2021.

Response

Below if a copy of the information requested.

• Wastage data was extracted on August 16th at 11am from a management information dashboard maintained by NHS National Services Scotland.
• Vaccination data was extracted on August 16th at 7:30am by Public Health Scotland. These data are hosted on their open data site.
• All data refers to vaccines delivered to and administered in Scotland.
• There are several reasons a vaccine may not be administered before being discarded, and therefore ‘wasted’, such as issues with storage, expired doses, vial size and/or specific clinical situations where there may be some dose loss.
• All products currently being used in Scotland are included in these figures, i.e. Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna.
• Wastage from GP practices is not included, as GPs do not record this information.
• Whilst every effort is made to minimise and record vaccine wastage, there may be some wastage that is not recorded by staff at the end of a vaccination clinic or some differences in how NHS Boards record waste. This is particularly true for wastage figures at the beginning of the programme. However, there is no better way to estimate “true” wastage.

Week ending	Weekly total of administered vaccines	Weekly total of wasted vaccines	Percentage of wasted doses
07/02/2021	293767	716	0.2%
14/02/2021	392178	958	0.2%
21/02/2021	213139	736	0.3%
28/02/2021	207613	806	0.4%
07/03/2021	202948	401	0.2%
14/03/2021	177545	767	0.4%
21/03/2021	336560	1024	0.3%
28/03/2021	334754	692	0.2%
04/04/2021	279404	627	0.2%
11/04/2021	237243	560	0.2%
18/04/2021	245912	551	0.2%
25/04/2021	337665	738	0.2%
02/05/2021	309080	822	0.3%
09/05/2021	242898	3174	1.3%
16/05/2021	279874	1018	0.4%
23/05/2021	299798	2738	0.9%
30/05/2021	321267	979	0.3%
06/06/2021	342189	915	0.3%
13/06/2021	326922	1326	0.4%
20/06/2021	269905	1027	0.4%
27/06/2021	222747	2114	0.9%
04/07/2021	186205	2385	1.3%
11/07/2021	184320	1295	0.7%
18/07/2021	133017	1828	1.4%
25/07/2021	130033	1381	1.1%
01/08/2021	136568	4448	3.3%
Total	6643551	34026	0.51%

About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.