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Unicef unveils plan to stockpile half a billion vaccine syringes by Christmas

Unicef aims to have stockpiled 520 million syringes by the end of the year, which will be used to administer Covid-19 jabs - ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 
Unicef aims to have stockpiled 520 million syringes by the end of the year, which will be used to administer Covid-19 jabs - ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
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Unicef has unveiled plans to stockpile more than half a billion syringes by Christmas, amid concerns that shortages could delay the rollout of successful Covid-19 vaccines.

The United Nations agency announced on Monday that it aims to have 520 million syringes stored in its warehouses across the globe by the end of the year. The aim is to ensure that the injection equipment arrives in countries before any potential coronavirus jab.

As vaccines are temperature sensitive, they tend to be rapidly transported across the globe via air. By contrast syringes, which are bulky and have a shelf life of five years, generally travel via a far slower route: sea freight.

There are growing concerns that this could result in a situation where countries have vaccine doses available, but no equipment to administer them.

“Vaccinating the world against Covid-19 will be one of the largest mass undertakings in human history, and we will need to move as quickly as the vaccines can be produced,” said Henrietta Fore, executive director of Unicef.

“In order to move fast later, we must move fast now. By the end of the year, we will already have over half a billion syringes pre-positioned where they can be deployed quickly and cost effectively.

“That’s enough syringes to wrap around the world one and a half times,” she added.

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The announcement comes amid optimism that the first vaccine doses may be available before the end of 2020, with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer revealing this weekend that it has “hundreds of thousands” of vaccine doses already ready at its Belgian production plant.

The company has indicated that it will seek regulatory approval for its candidate, developed alongside Germany's BioNTech, in mid-November - assuming data from its phase three clinical trial is positive. The mRNA vaccine requires two doses and is one of 11 in final stage trials.

Closer to home, there are also hopes that the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate could be ready for mass roll-out as early as December. According to the Sunday Times, Prof Jonathan Van Tam, deputy chief medical officer, told MPs last week that “it isn't a totally unrealistic suggestion that we could deploy a vaccine soon after Christmas”.

Unicef is working alongside Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to procure and transport syringes, which will then be used for the Covax facility - a global effort to distribute two billion vaccine doses across the world by the end of 2021.

To date more than 180 economies, including the UK, have signed up to the scheme, which aims to combat “vaccine nationalism” and share the costs of vaccine research and distribution among developing and developed countries.

All vaccines are temperature sensitive and cold-chains must be maintained across the globe. Here jabs protecting against five major childhood diseases are stored in a cold room in India - Singh/Unicef
All vaccines are temperature sensitive and cold-chains must be maintained across the globe. Here jabs protecting against five major childhood diseases are stored in a cold room in India - Singh/Unicef

Unicef said its efforts to stockpile 520 million syringes this year were part of a broader strategy to purchase one billion in 2021 for Covid-19. The agency also aims to secure access to 620 million syringes for vaccination programmes to protect against other diseases, including measles and typhoid.

The organisation added that it will purchase some five million safety boxes to dispose of syringes and needles at health facilities, in an attempt to reduce the risk of needle stick injuries and blood borne diseases. Each box can carry 100 syringes safely.

Unicef, already the one of the largest single vaccine buyers in the world, has also emerged as a key player in plans to maintain vaccine “cold chains” across the globe.

Despite huge strides in recent years, gaps in infrastructure in developing countries means that nearly three billion people currently live in places with insufficient temperature-controlled storage for a Covid-19 immunisation campaign - especially because several leading candidates may need to be “deep frozen” at temperatures as low as -70C.