Coronavirus: health experts suggest selling Hong Kong’s unused vaccines or pausing fresh supplies as expiry date looms
- About 2 million doses are languishing in storage amid a sluggish inoculation campaign, with BioNTech ones due to expire in August
- Health experts have suggested selling the shots to countries in need or pausing phased supply from manufacturers; officials look at donating the doses
Nearly 4 million jabs from Chinese producer Sinovac and Germany’s BioNTech have arrived in the city since February, but about 2 million of them are still languishing in storage amid a sluggish inoculation campaign.
Three months into the vaccination drive, only about 1.28 million people, or 17 per cent of residents, have taken their first dose. Around 921,500 have received their second shot.
William Chui Chun-ming, president of the Society for Hospital Pharmacists, believed the city faced three choices – to either dispose of the leftover doses by incineration, or donate or resell them to other countries.
Chui’s personal preference though was to sell them to coronavirus-stricken countries in the region, such as India, Pakistan, Nepal or the Philippines.
“Those countries are short of jabs but not money. We can get some cash back to purchase second-generation vaccines when they become available in the future,” he said.
But infectious disease expert Dr Leung Chi-chiu believed Hong Kong could simply ask for a pause in the phased delivery of vaccines to avoid facing the dilemma of dumping or selling shots.