EU countries destroyed €4 billion worth of Covid-19 vaccines, reveals research

Nearly 215 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines purchased by EU countries at the height of the pandemic have since been thrown away at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of €4 billion, an analysis by POLITICO has revealed. The figure of 215 million doses of the vaccine having been wasted is probably an underestimate.

Since the first Covid-19 vaccines were approved in late 2020, European Union countries have collectively taken delivery of 1.5 billion doses (more than three for every person in Europe). Many of these now lie in landfills across the Continent.

Calculations based on available data show that EU countries have discarded an average of 0.7 jabs for every member of their population.

Estonia, which threw away more than one dose per inhabitant tops the list of the enormous wastage, followed closely by Germany, which also threw away the largest raw volume of jabs.

If this average waste rate is projected across the rest of the EU, it would equal more than 312 million destroyed vaccines.

The number of wasted vaccines tends to correspond to countries’ size, with Germany accounting for 83 million discarded doses and Luxembourg just under half a million.

Governments, including the EU’s second-most populous country France, have been reluctant to reveal the scale of the waste, but it is certain that most EU nations have resorted to wasting the doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

POLITICO’s calculations are based on numbers from 19 European countries — 15 that supplied direct figures, and four where volumes were reported in local media. Some figures date from as recently as this month; the oldest come from December 2022. The passage of time means the figures are conservative, with the real number of discarded vaccines likely to be much higher.

Germany, for example, provided its waste figures to POLITICO in June; at the time it had another 120 million vaccines sitting in storage. Vaccine-makers have also since introduced newer versions that are adapted to the latest coronavirus variants, making older jabs obsolete and more likely to be discarded.

According to the research carried out, the value of the 215 million wasted vaccines is more than €4 billion, based on vaccine prices reported in the. For countries that only reported the total number of vaccines destroyed, without breaking it down by vaccine type, POLITICO used a weighted average price of €19.39 calculated from data given by countries that provided a breakdown.

Again, this figure is almost certainly a minimum. But even €4 billion is a considerable sum, equal to a large infrastructure project or to the annual health care spending of Croatia.

Many of the vaccines in question were purchased at the height of the pandemic in 2021 when the EU, the U.S. and the U.K. were all scrambling to secure a limited number of doses. It was during that frenzied time that the EU entered into its single biggest contract to purchase 1.1 billion doses from Pfizer and BioNTech.

Countries were locked into buying doses even as the pandemic subsided, while efforts to donate excess jabs to third countries were thwarted by falling demand and logistics issues. The repercussions are more than financial. Questions around how the big Pfizer contract was negotiated have dogged Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ever since the New York Times reported that the EU chief had exchanged messages with Pfizer’s CEO in the run-up to the deal.

The contract has already been renegotiated by the European Commission under pressure from EU countries suffering from a vaccine glut. Both Poland and Hungary stopped accepting vaccines and are being sued by Pfizer for non-payment.

In Romania, prosecutors want to lift immunity for its former prime minister and two former health ministers, claiming excessive vaccine purchases caused more than €1 billion in damages to the state.

The jabs will however, keep coming, with the revised contract with Pfizer locking European countries into buying vaccines until at least 2027.