2021News

The excess vaccine stock dilemma

The Dominican Republic is having to deal with a surplus of Covid-19 vaccines.

The vaccines would be sufficient to vaccinate Dominican neighbors in Haiti, but with Covid-19 so far not a major health issue in Haiti, Haitians in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic have been reluctant to get vaccinated.

As word gets out of the ease of getting vaccinated here, a new vaccine tourism is developing. Already hundreds are coming from the Central American and Caribbean region for a vaccine vacation.

At a time when most regional countries have a scarcity of vaccines, why the surplus in the Dominican Republic? When Covax and Pfizer did not deliver vaccines as agreed, the Dominican government signed an agreement with China to begin vaccinating earlier than later. As a result, China has delivered 15.8 million doses at the cost of around US$19-US$21 per dose. The Chinese vaccines enabled the country to kickstart a mass vaccination campaign as early as February 2021. Most Dominicans have already received the Sinovac vaccine. Now that Covax is delivering AstraZeneca vaccines and Pfizer is delivering, there are more vaccines than the requirements of the Dominican population.

The Dominican Republic already has one of the highest rate of fully vaccinated people in the Americas. Now that batches of earlier contracted AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines have begun to arrive, the Dominican Republic has a surplus of vaccines. Listin Diario reports that the surplus could cost the country around RD$5 to RD$9 billion. The feature published on 31 August 2021, explains the DR has contracted for 35 million vaccine doses when it has a population of 10.8 million inhabitants, of which around 7.8 million are adults.

The problem was that the pharmaceuticals obliged the country to sign closed contracts that exempted them from being penalized for not delivering on time. At the same time, the take-it-or-leave-it contracts forced the buyer to take the vaccines, even if these were delivered late as occurred.

In October 2020, the Health Cabinet announced signing contracts for 10 million vaccines with AstraZeneca-Biontech for US$40 million, at US$4 per vaccine. With Pfizer, the initial 2020 agreement of 7,999,000 vaccine vials was extended to 9,999,990 in 2021 at a cost of US$119,999,980 with a unit cost of US$12 per vaccine.

Listin Diario estimates the Dominican Republic could have an excess of 10 to 15 million contracted vaccines. The large vaccine stocks are dated and need to be used.

DR1 records show that the Dominican Republic has received 1,389,200 doses of AstraZeneca (6.6%), 15,818,000 doses of Sinovac/Sinopharm vaccines (75.13%), and 3,847,250 doses of Pfizer vaccines (18.27%).

Read more in Spanish:
Listin Diario

1 September 2021