The Department of Health (DOH) said that at least 10,000 doses of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines have been wasted since the government started its vaccination program.

“To date, we have about 10,000 doses already registered as wastage,” said DOH Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje in an interview over radio DZBB on Sunday, Sept. 19.

Cabotaje said that one of the causes of vaccine wastage was "temperature excursion."

“Ibig sabihin ang mga bakuna...yung mga frozen vaccines ay na thaw after a certain period (It means that the frozen vaccines were thawed after a certain period),” she said.

“There's another yung hindi na plug nung bumalik ang kuryente (There's another incident where they forgot to plug the when the electric power supply was restored). These are what we call temperature excursions,” she added.

“Sa ibang areas naman, may mga nabasag, walang label, may mga nahulog (In other areas, some vials were broken and some had no labels),” she furthered.

Cabotage said that the recorded wastage is still considered as just a fraction out of the 40 million doses of vaccines already administered as of Sept. 17.

“ 10,000 out of 40 million. Maliit but sayang pa rin,” she said.

“Kaya for every incidents, inaaral natin yung mga reasons tapos binibigyan natin ng advisory kung ano ang mga nararapat para ma avoid yung mga wastage na iyan (So for every incidents, we are determining the causes and then we give an advisory on what are the necessary measures to avoid wastage),” she said.