Expired COVID-19 Vaccines Cost Canada $1.2 Billion

Syringes and vials of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are seen on a work surface during a drive through clinic at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ont., on Dec. 18, 2021. The Canadian Press/Lars Hagberg

Canada’s Public Health Agency is expected to write off $1.2 billion for COVID-19 vaccines that have expired, according to budget documents.

“While largely now passed, there is a diminishing amount of pandemic legacy costs,” the budget documents said.

“The government expects to record $1.2 billion in 2023-24 for the write-down by the Public Health Agency of Canada of expired COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics,” the documents said, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

Canada’s auditor general noted in 2022 that the federal government signed seven contracts with COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers that obliged Ottawa to commit to advance purchase agreements of doses, causing an excess during the pandemic.

“Based on the market realities at the time, these agreements contained binding requirements to purchase a specific number of doses, and options were included to buy additional doses,” the auditor general’s report said. “The agreements ranged from 20 to 76 million total doses. By signing several advance purchase agreements, there were more chances to obtain the sufficient number of vaccines for Canada’s needs, but there was also the possibility that, should all vaccines receive Health Canada’s authorization, Canada would have a surplus of vaccine doses.”

The report estimates about 169 million vaccine doses were purchased from December 2020 to May 2022. About 124.9 million of those were delivered to Canada, it said, and the majority of those doses were used to vaccinate Canadians.

Six of seven COVID-19 vaccines had been authorized for use in Canada, meaning the government was purchasing an excess of stock.

“With each authorized vaccine came an obligation to purchase a specific quantity of doses,” the auditor general’s office wrote.

Most of the contracts had the option to purchase additional doses, which the Liberal government did for Pfizer and Moderna, adding to the oversupply, the report said.

“This led to vaccine wastage as some of the doses expired before they could be used or donated.”

The report did not blame the government for the contracts, saying that there had been a high demand for vaccines and it put pressure on global governments to secure agreements.

“In such an environment, advance payments and obligations for minimum purchase were required. Furthermore, Canada had very limited domestic capacity to produce vaccines and therefore was reliant on international imported products.”

However, the report did hold the Public Health Agency accountable for not minimizing the waste of the vaccine.

“We also found that minimizing wastage was affected by the agency’s delay in implementing important functionalities of VaccineConnect, the information technology system intended to support planning and managing the COVID‑19 vaccines and decision making around vaccine wastage,” the auditor general’s office wrote.

One dose of the vaccine was estimated to cost $30, excluding taxes, according to the report.

“As a result, at the end of our audit period, the Government of Canada had spent approximately $5 billion on vaccines for the 169 million doses paid for between December 2020 and May 2022,” the report said.

In July, Health Canada directed provinces to destroy their inventories of XBB COVID-19 vaccines. These shots targeted the Omicron variant, as opposed to the vaccines targeting the initial variants of the coronavirus.

The department told The Epoch Times that it was working on a transition plan with the provinces and territories to switch to updated vaccines.

Jennifer Cowan contributed to this report.