As the vaccine uptake in The Bahamas continues to dwindle, Vaccine Committee Co-Chair Dr. Danny Davis said yesterday that some batches of COVID-19 vaccines have expired and several more are set to expire over the next few months.
“At the rate at which we are consuming vaccines, invariably if that (uptake) doesn’t increase, I think once again we will be faced with having vaccine doses that would have expired,” he said during an Office of the Prime Minister press conference.
He continued, “There are two batches [of Pfizer] that we have in-country and one expires at the end of May and the other at the end of August.”
Davis was unable to say exactly how many doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have expired.
The Bahamas launched its vaccination campaign in March 2021.
As the pace of vaccinations decreased, the government launched incentive programs.
However, Davis said they were not as successful as the government had hoped.
“We have had a number of programs and I’ll just briefly say that those programs didn’t have the type of response that we wanted. But what it showed us is that with education, individuals will avail themselves of the vaccine,” he said.
“So, rather than trying to incentivize, we have been trying to educate the public on the benefits of engaging this vaccination.
Davis said 165,837 individuals have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in The Bahamas. He noted that the number represents 51.3 percent of the eligible population, but is roughly 42.6 percent of the total population.
Since the start of the vaccination program, the government has obtained more than 300,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer. However, Davis said the only vaccine available now is Pfizer.
