The Control Yuan on Friday corrected the New Taipei City Government, the city’s Department of Health, its affiliated Sanchong District Public Health Center and the governing Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for fudging figures related to the number of administered government-funded seasonal flu vaccines.
A correction proposed by Control Yuan members Peter Chang (張武修), Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲) and Tsai Chung-yi (蔡崇義), who led the investigation, was passed on Thursday.
Government-funded flu vaccines have been provided across the nation since 1998. Eligibility has been gradually expanded to achieve a higher coverage rate.
The investigation found that the Sanchong Public Health Center in 2015 falsely reported the number of vaccines administered, but the supervising health department did not immediately correct the mistake.
The health department in late January received a report on the mistake, began to review vaccination records and in early February confirmed the facts of the case, but only started to interview a few of those involved about a month later, the Control Yuan said in a statement.
The investigation found that among the 6 million doses of government-funded vaccines purchased last year, about 310,000 doses lacked a recipient’s name, the statement said.
While the location of those vaccines remains unknown, the public health center has destroyed at least 10,000 vaccines, it said.
Chang said the investigation panel reviewed flu vaccination records from 370 public health centers and found that about 1.44 million vaccines were administered last year, but only about 1.13 million had a recipient’s name.
The preliminary determination by the Centers for Disease Control is that most of the vaccines were administered to the public, CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said on Friday, but added that all public health centers have been instructed to report back to the CDC on the issue before the end of the month.
Aside from the Sanchong case, vaccines could be missing because some were administered at outdoor stations, MRT stations, supermarkets and other locations where the recipients’ National Health Insurance data could not be entered into the online system, but were only submitted on paper, he said.
Some public health centers also purchased additional vaccines from public vendors and might have entered them into the wrong system, he added.
The CDC would improve management protocols and review mechanisms for vaccines after further examination, Lo said.
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