The health ministry failed to show enough grounds for its decision to procure a total of 882 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for the government-funded vaccination drive, the Board of Audit said in a new report released Wednesday.
The ministry did not check real-time inventory of the shots in Japan as it racked up orders for vaccines from four manufacturers, according to the report, suggesting that some of the orders may have been excessive.
The four were Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca as well as Takeda Pharmaceutical, which had signed a deal with Novavax to manufacture the U.S. firm’s vaccine in Japan.