Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that a batch of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines had expired and was disposed of, but Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), denied the claim.
In a live radio interview, Ko said that he had recently learned that a batch of the Moderna vaccine had expired and was destroyed.
The reason for the destruction was because the CECC’s vaccination policy is a mess, he said.
Photo from Peggy Chen’s Facebook page
“Many of the center’s policies were made with political considerations overriding professional judgement,” he said, calling Chen “unprofessional.”
In an earlier interview, Taipei Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun (蔡炳坤) said that the city government had administered all of its doses from the batch prior to its expiry on Tuesday last week, but the CECC had allocated other doses from the batch to other cities and counties, although they were to be administered at a temporary vaccination site at Taipei Railway Station.
Tsai said that 357 vials, or 4,998 doses, were allocated to the temporary station, and when the operation ended on Tuesday last week, 11 vials remained.
The station returned the 11 vials to the CECC, he said.
However, Chen said that no Moderna doses had expired or were destroyed in that timeframe.
There are about 110,000 Moderna doses that expire on Tuesday next week, including about 17,000 in Taipei and 30,000 in New Taipei City, so the CECC is allocating them for use before that, he said.
Asked about Ko’s remark that he is unprofessional, Chen, laughing, said that the CECC’s logistics providers have the expertise to allocate vaccines, while vaccination policies were recommended by specialist committees.
The CECC is in charge of coordination and implementation, he said.
Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the CECC’s spokesman, said that wording in CECC news releases saying that vaccines “have all been used up” means that doses that are not used on people are given to researchers for experiments on animals.
Chuang said that 392 Moderna doses with an expiration date of Tuesday last week were offered to academic researchers that applied to the CECC to use them in animal experiments.
The CECC does not intentionally leave vaccines unused to facilitate animal experiments, he said.
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