How Calderdale health professionals are keeping wastage of Covid-19 vaccine to a minimum

This is largely linked to “no shows” and causes issues particularly with the hard-to-store Pfizer vaccine but has been kept to a minimum in Calderdale, the Health and Well-being Board heard.

Coun Ashley Evans (Lib Dem, Warley) asked about how vaccine wastages were minimised.

Referring to a neighbouring authority he said he believed there had recently been “no shows” at a vaccine station.

If that happened it was a shame and he hoped it would not in Calderdale – there were issues with the shelf-life of one of the vaccines and he asked whether it was best to have reserve patients in place to minimise waste.

Central Halifax Primary Care Network (PCN) Clinical Director Dr Nadeem Akhtar said the points were valid with the greater concern being about the Pfizer vaccine because of storage issues.

Practices had maximised usage, he said.

“There has been very little wastage in Calderdale.

“In central Halifax we have done two clinics where we did 1,100 vaccinations in a few days at each of them.

“Very few patients didn’t arrive and we followed up the ones that didn’t and told them to come.

“At the end of the day we only had a few left which were used for healthcare staff, for example a local dentist,” said Dr Akhtar.

The Astrazeneca vaccine did not pose the same storage problems, he said.

Neil Smurthwaite, Deputy Chief Officer of Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, said there had been no similar volumes of “no shows” in Calderdale compared to the other authority.

“Measures are in place to ensure no wastage,” he said.

Upper Calder Valley PCN Clinical Director Dr Nigel Taylor said when practices had doses left at the of the day they went down the list to the next group and also had a list of patients “on reserve”.

“Wastage has been in the single digits at a maximum,” he said.

Lower Calder Valley PCN Director Dr Alex Ross said the only significant “no show” days had been two sessions hit by show when people physically could not get there and extra clincics had been set up to ensure people were vaccinated quickly.