The rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination program has reached new heights of complexity with the start of the bivalent booster program, leading to concerns about the potential for more errors in the administration of vaccines.
Even before the addition of the new booster shots, more than 5,300 errors in vaccine dose delivery in children alone were reported, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those errors included giving the wrong dose or the wrong product for a recipient’s age, using undiluted vaccine when dilution was called for, or administering vaccine that was past its expiration date.
The CDC says that there’s no evidence so far that these administration errors have triggered more severe adverse events than are normally reported in children who have been given the correct doses of these products. But everyone involved in this effort understands that vaccine administration errors undermine the confidence of the people delivering vaccine, the people who received the wrong dose and, if those people are children, their parents.
“I just honestly feel terrible about the fact that there are so many administration errors that seem disproportionate to what we’ve seen with other vaccines or with the adult [Covid] vaccines,” Grace Lee, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said during a recent meeting at which some updated figures on adverse events in children were presented.
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