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SEOUL (REUTERS) – In a handful of South Korean hospitals, designated nurses are using specially designed syringes to squeeze additional doses of coronavirus vaccine from each vial in an attempt to stretch the still limited number of vials to cover more. persons.
The practice has sparked a debate over medical safety and business concerns from manufacturers that charge per dose.
But at the Seoul National Medical Center, healthcare workers say it’s actually a safe and easy process that should be a no-brainer for countries struggling to provide enough vaccines quickly.
“Two designated nurses take turns drawing doses and each of us had no problem getting seven doses from each vial, vaccinating all,” said Ms Kim Eun-suk, an IV therapy specialist who was taking a shift. extracting doses of Covid- 19 vaccines from vials that officially only contain six.
On Tuesday (March 9), Ms Kim said the center vaccinated 629 people with 90 vials of the Pfizer vaccine jointly developed by its German partner BioNTech, compared to 540 people if they had only drawn six doses of each. vial.
It takes about five minutes to draw the doses using “low dead space” syringes designed to minimize residual volume, he said.
“The extraction itself is not difficult. It requires expressing the exact amount with the syringe. The most important thing is sterilization and I think any nurse could succeed.”
At the suggestion of front-line nurses, the Korea Disease Prevention and Control Agency (KDCA) said it was up to providers whether to use the remaining doses, but did not make it a new standard or mandatory because it said it could overload health workers. in the place.
The president of the National Medical Center, Chung Ki-hyun, said that contracts with manufacturers, who sell by dose, should not be an obstacle for health workers on site to use the remaining doses when they can save lives.
“With care and precision, the extra dose is not that difficult to extract,” he said.
It’s unclear how many South Korean clinics are using the extra doses, but Chung said following the official limit means ditching vaccines that can save lives.
Experts were divided over the decision to draw additional doses, as combining the leftover vaccine from multiple vials can lead to contamination. However, with specialized low dead space syringes, a full additional dose can typically be drawn from a single vial of Pfizer vaccine and up to two additional doses from AstraZeneca vaccine vials.
The Korean Medical Association (KMA) urged caution about imprecise extraction and recommended that its members discard the remaining doses in the vials, according to a statement seen by Reuters.
KDCA said 446,941 people received the first doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer before midnight Tuesday. South Korea reported 470 new cases on Tuesday, adding to its total coronavirus cases of 93,733, with 1,648 deaths.
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