ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The middle of summer means vaccine season is not far off. This year, the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax vaccines are the only companies approved by the FDA to produce COVID-19 vaccines. Johnson & Johnson announced the end of their COVID-19 vaccine production weeks ago. 

This was no surprise to Dr. Curtis Haas, the chief pharmacy officer at the University of Rochester Medical Center because it was never very popular. He explained the leftover J&J vaccines will go on to be used for more research. 

What You Need To Know

  • COVID-19 vaccine rates peaked in April of 2021 when the shot became available to majority of the population

  • Johnson and Johnson has ended production of its COVID-19 vaccine

  • Medical professionals say leftover shots will reach their expiration dates and go to waste, but those shots are for the outdated variant of the shot anyway 

  • Doctors are waiting for the updated CDC guidelines for this year's round of COVID vaccines
  • Medical professionals are using the same technique as the flue shot to order COVID-19 vaccines 

"They’re not in line with current variants. They’re the original variant that’s not recommended right now for booster doses. So they’re not, whatever is out there, which is probably not a lot, won’t be used and it’s likely, you know, they’ll go to waste, but you know, that’s the nature of the vaccines,” Dr. Haas explained. “There are obviously expiration dates on all of these products, but the reality is that the current vaccine will be phased out before we’ll be really hitting expiration dates.” 

The medical field will be able to learn from the waste of leftover COVID-19 vaccines. We’re only three years into studying the coronavirus and the U.S. Health and Human Services Department has already seen lots of ups and downs in vaccination rates. 

When the majority of the population was given access to the COVID-19 vaccine, rates peaked in April 2021. At that point, 3 to 4 million people were being given doses of the vaccine every day. Numbers have dropped consistently in the warmer months and have increased around flu season ever since. Now medical professionals are studying those numbers to try to predict how many vaccines will be used this fall.

“The industry is trying to understand what the demand is going to be because that will absolutely drive their production. The other thing it’s going to change too is, you know, in the past when trying to do large mass vaccination programs, the vaccines are packaged in a way that you had to have 10 people vaccinated or six, depending upon which vaccine is your hands. In the future, these will be single doses. And so there’ll be much more like flu vaccine and other vaccines where they’re going to be much more aligned with how we use vaccines and seasonal nature,” Dr. Haas said. 

When the public health emergency ended in the middle of May, more than 75% of New Yorkers were vaccinated, but only 15% were up to date with their booster shots. Dr. Haas says he thinks once the new guidelines come out for the fall, numbers will go back up and then drop off again as demand lowers farther into the season.

Doctors are using the same method to order COVID-19 vaccines as they have for flu shots for years. Despite there being minimal years to compare COVID-19 vaccine rates to, they can still predict who will be getting vaccinated and who might stick around for their COVID-19 shot. That learning process will continue for quite some time.