Around 8 million Covid-19 vaccines in possession of the Federal Government will be destroyed as they have now expired or become obsolete.
Frank Vandenbroucke, Federal Minister of Health, told the House of Representatives on Monday that several million doses of Belgium’s 15.3 million reserve would need to be destroyed.
“Several studies show that the efficacy of the modified BA.4/5 vaccines is clearly superior to that of the original vaccine,” the minister said. “So we can no longer use surplus original vaccines. They will be destroyed as soon as possible. We are talking about 2,631,000 doses of Moderna and 3,305,220 doses of mRNA vaccines from Pfizer. This is a consequence purely linked to the new types of vaccines that have been developed.”
Due to limited space in freezers, other expired doses will also need to make room for new ones. “The destruction is already underway of 2,353,200 original doses of Moderna and 1,343,160 doses of Pfizer,” the Federal Minister of Health noted.
Belgium has already destroyed much of its strategic reserve of Covid materials, such as personal protective equipment, tests, and vaccines.
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In April last year, Belgium the Federal Government destroyed €98.5 million worth of face masks, testing materials, and medicines related to the Covid-19 pandemic, because they were either past their expiration date or of inadequate quality. In July 2022, 1.3 million vaccines were destroyed.
The government previously faced criticism for attempting to dump its strategic stockpile of Covid-19 medicines on Ukraine.
In May 2022, Belgium sent 280,000 medicines and 140,000 syringes to Ukraine which had expired on arrival. €3.4 million in medical aid was likely wasted.
