Nigeria destroys 1 million expired donated COVID-19 vaccines

LAGOS – Nigeria destroyed much than 1 cardinal expired doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine connected Wednesday aft authorities said they could not beryllium utilized earlier their expiration date.

Faisal Shuaib, caput of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said wellness officials successful Africa's astir populous state were near with small prime aft receiving the donated doses that didn't person overmuch support beingness left.

“We had developed countries that procured these vaccines and hoarded them," helium said. “At the constituent they were astir to expire, they offered them for donation.”

Last week Shuaib had announced that Nigeria would nary longer judge specified donations, though helium did not specify publically what officials considered excessively abbreviated a support life.

Only 2% of Nigeria's 206 cardinal radical are afloat vaccinated, and wellness officials person acceptable an ambitious extremity of vaccinating much than a 4th of the colonisation by February. While hesitancy has been high, the country's vaccination complaint has astir doubled implicit the past week.

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Nigeria has been seeing a spike successful confirmed infections since it detected the highly-infectious omicron variant successful precocious November, signaling a 500% summation successful cases implicit the past 2 weeks, according to the Nigeria Center for Disease Control.

The 2,123 caller COVID-19 infections it confirmed connected Tuesday was the highest regular tally since past January and the 2nd highest since the pandemic began.

“If we are going to flooded this COVID-19 pandemic, we person to bash amended occupation of ensuring amended proviso of the COVID-19 vaccines," said Shuaib. "No state volition beryllium capable to eradicate COVID-19 ... until each countries are capable to eradicate it.”

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