Injection safety in the context of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination

This document serves to update the policy brief Injection safety in the context of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination (IS Policy Brief), with additional guidance. The IS Policy Brief remains valid and highlights the overall importance of reinforcing injection safety in the context of the pandemic, especially considering the significant resulting increase in the number of injections being administered worldwide.

This Addendum confirms that substituting syringes with re-use prevention features (RUP) for auto-disable (AD) syringes may exceptionally be necessary to address shortages of 0.3 ml AD syringes. In addition to the shortages of this specialty size, this Addendum to the IS Policy Brief further acknowledges compounding factors that will exacerbate availability challenges of AD syringes for some COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, some dosing regimens now call for non-standard dose volumes that do not correspond to any existing size of AD syringes.