Nigeria has destroyed over a million doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccinations to reassure a worried public that they have been removed from circulation.
The devastation occurred on Wednesday, more than a week after health officials announced that some COVID-19 doses supplied by wealthy Western countries had a shelf life of only a few weeks, leaving only a few weeks to deliver the vaccines.
According to Reuters, around one million COVID-19 vaccines expired in Nigeria in November without being used, according to Reuters.
As reporters and health officials looked on, a bulldozer crushed AstraZeneca shots that were packaged in cardboard boxes and plastic at a dumpsite in Abuja.
Conspiracy theories have circulated on social media and by word of mouth as the vaccines have been delivered.
“As a result, the government has made a concerted effort to reassure Nigerians that these vaccines are highly effective.” “This is why they chose to create a public spectacle of destroying the outdated vaccines,” he explained.
According to Faisal Shuaib, executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, a paucity of vaccination supplies on the continent forced Nigeria to accept the doses, despite the fact that they had a short shelf life.
“We were able to successfully remove 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccinations from the market.” We have kept our pledge to Nigerians to be transparent. “Today’s destruction provides Nigerians with an opportunity to have faith in our immunisation campaign,” Shuaib remarked.
As inoculation rates trail richer countries, governments throughout the continent of more than one billion people have pushed for additional vaccine delivery.
Lower vaccination levels increase the chance of COVID-19 infection and death, especially as new, fast-spreading forms such as Omicron arise.
Nigeria will no longer accept vaccines with a short shelf life, according to Health Minister Osagie Ehanire, citing a presidential committee decision.
As of December 19, the World Health Organization reported that 12,971,729 vaccine doses have been delivered in Nigeria.
Since the epidemic began, 227,378 COVID-19 cases and 2,989 deaths have been reported in Africa’s most populous country, which has a population of over 200 million people.
Nigeria has to increase its vaccination programme, which is currently at 100,000 doses per day, to reach its goal of inoculating more than half of its people by the end of next year, according to health experts.
Nigeria, like many other African countries, has recently experienced a boom in vaccine supplies, highlighting other difficulties such as distribution and residents’ reluctance to be immunised.
