Slovenia has so far discarded more than three million doses of expired Covid-19 vaccines with the Health Ministry estimating €27 million worth of vaccines having to go to waste because they have been left unused.

Slovenia has been making Covid-19 vaccination widely available free of charge to all residents, but the uptake, in particular in the past year has been low and falling still despite a rising number of coronavirus cases.

With the virus mutating, vaccine manufacturers have been developing jabs targetting new variants and sub-variants and Slovenia has been making available all approved vaccines adapted to the sub-lineages present, the Health Ministry noted.

Data from the National Institute of Public Health shows that most of over three million doses that have been thrown away reached their expiry date its own storehouses. Most of the vaccines have been thrown away this year. The fewest were discarded in 2021.

A recent analysis by the Brussels news bulletin Politico has shown that EU member states have thrown away at least 215 million of Covid-19 vaccines at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of €4 billion.

That analysis ranks Slovenia third among EU countries by the amount of vaccines wasted per capita (0.94), after Estonia (1.10) and Germany (0.98). On average, EU countries threw out 0.7 doses of vaccine per capita.

NIJZ data as of 21 December shows that 57% of Slovenia's entire population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, the vast majority within the first year since the vaccine became available. Only some 662,000 people or 31% of the population got one additional jab and 80,255 or 4% got two additional shots.