HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — Across Central Georgia, some providers of the COVID-19 vaccines say they're having to throw away unused doses daily.
Pharmacist Tej Patel at Medicine Stop on Watson Boulevard says the demand for the vaccine has gone down, but they have a large supply. He says they've had to toss about 100 doses recently.
"Yeah, we're losing a lot of vaccines every day," said Patel.
Medicine Stop carries all three brands of the vaccine and each one has a different number of doses.
He says once they open a vial of vaccine doses, it's only good for a few hours.
"Let's say we're opening Pfizer, well there's only six doses in that. Let's say we open Moderna, we only have 10 doses in that one, and then we have Johnson & Johnson and there's five doses in that one," said Patel.
Denise Joyner with Houston Healthcare says they've done more than 24,000 shots total -- including clinics at schools and churches. She says they waste some doses -- but it's very few.
"No, because we usually take out just very little at first to see what the volume of people would be to get the vaccine. We've waste very little," said Joyner.
Tuesday, she attended a vaccine clinic at the Warner Robins campus of Georgia Military College -- she did four shots that day.
“We have not seen a large volume, but again the schools are closed for the summer, so the volume is low,” she said.
Patel says when the vaccine first became available, they had hundreds of people calling to ask for the shot. Now, it's down to about 10 people a day or less.
“But we don't know. We truly don't know it's day-to-day. It's gonna be different,” said Patel.
Patel says both Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccine last six hours -- but Moderna lasts for 12.