Swiss stockpile of Covid-19 vaccine doses still growing

Only about 12% of the Swiss population has got a Covid-19 jab in the last six months, despite an autumn booster campaign. © Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi

Switzerland is sitting on millions of surplus doses of Covid-19 vaccine, with more and more having to be destroyed, reports the NZZ newspaper on Friday.

This is despite calls for people to get booster jabs this winter, especially older people and those with health problems. The newspaper puts this down to vaccine fatigue and the government playing it safe, ordering ahead for 2023.

Switzerland currently has 13.5 million doses available for use, and two million more are expected in the coming weeks. The Alpine country has also committed to purchase another 11.6 million doses, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) confirmed. Most of these doses are expected in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, some of which were ordered last year. Their delivery was postponed to 2023 “in order to always receive the most current vaccine”, the FOPH told Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA.

A total of 32.6 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been delivered to Switzerland so far, according to the statement, and 16.95 million doses had been administered by Wednesday.

In addition, according to the FOPH, 7.76 million doses were stored as Swiss government property in a warehouse in Belgium for transfer to third countries. Those vaccines had to be disposed of locally in autumn 2022 after reaching their expiry date, and the warehouse had to be closed. To date, 4.2 million vaccine doses have been passed on to other countries.

As for vaccine fatigue, only 12.16% of the population has had a jab in the last six months. Over a longer period of time, nearly 70% have had at least one dose.

The official number of new Covid-19 cases in Switzerland continues to fall, with a total of 4,166 reported on January 5 for the previous seven-day period (12,632 new cases were reported on December 29). There were 225 new hospital admissions (-42%) and 25 reported deaths (stable). This may not, however, reflect the reality, as since January 1 the government no longer covers the costs of testing. The number of tests carried out over the past week fell by 50%.