The United States discarded 82.1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from December 2020 through mid-May this year, just over 11 percent of the doses the U.S. federal government distributed, according to a report of NBC News.
Two retail pharmacy chains, CVS and Walmart, were responsible for over a quarter of the doses thrown away in the United States in that time period, in part due to the sheer volume of vaccine they handled, said the report published on Monday, citing data offered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Two states discarded more than a quarter of their doses - Oklahoma, which tossed 28 percent of the nearly 4 million doses it received, and Alaska, which threw away almost 27 percent of its 1 million doses, according to the CDC data.
Public health experts said the waste is alarming at a time when less than half of fully vaccinated Americans have a booster shot and when many poorer countries continue to struggle with vaccine supply, said the report.
