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MORE than £57 million worth of Covid anti-virals expired earlier this year, an FOI request has revealed.
The disposal of some 26,000 doses of GlaxoSmithKline’s Sotrovimab held by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) were discussed by the Covid-19 anti-virals and therapeutics taskforce strategy board, according to newly released minutes of its meeting on February 2.
Members decided to hold the medications which were due to expire that month in storage in the unlikely event that the National Institute for Health and care Excellence, which has estimated each doses’ commercial price at £2,209, changed its recommendations to make Sotrovimab a first or second choice medication for people suffering Covid-19 symptoms over two alternatives, Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Roche’s RoActemra.
Options to extend all of some their shelf life to next month and give them to the NHS were rejected after the board heard just seven of 9,000 units issued per day were used.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are doing everything we can to minimise potential disposals of sotrovimab by extending the shelf life of appropriate volumes of the product.”
