About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired – meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million is being written off as trash.
"It's a lot, by historical standards," said Jerry Weir, who oversees vaccine research and review for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The outdated vaccine, some of which expired Wednesday, will be incinerated. The amount, more than twice the usual leftovers, likely sets a record. And that's not even all of it.
About 30 million more doses will expire later and may go unused, according to one government estimate. If all that vaccine expires, more than 43 percent of the supply for the U.S. public will have gone to waste.
Federal officials defended the huge purchase as a necessary risk in the face of a never-before-seen virus. Many health experts had feared the new flu could be the deadly global epidemic they had long warned about, but it ended up killing fewer people than seasonal flu. Read Regular Flu More Deadly Than Swine Flu.
About 162 million doses were meant for the general public. Another 36 million included doses for the military and other countries.
But demand never took off, for several reasons:
_Tests of the vaccine soon showed only one dose was enough to protect most people.
_Much of the vaccine was not ready until late 2009, after the largest wave of swine flu illnesses passed.
_Swine flu turned out not to be as deadly as was first feared. About 12,000 deaths have been attributed to it – or roughly a third of the estimated annual deaths from seasonal flu.
So while people were waiting hours for swine flu vaccinations in some cities in October and November, by January local health departments were trying gimmicks to get anyone at all to come in for a shot.
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