Nigeria destroys over 1 million expired COVID doses

The government of Nigeria has destroyed over 1 million expired AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses on Wednesday. 

Faisal Shuaib, head of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency on behalf of the government, noted that the nation did not have any other option than to destroy the vaccine doses as they were not coming in use and expired. 

The vaccines that the Nigerian government has destroyed were the ones the country received in donations to assure the general public that they are not being inoculated with the expired COVID-19 vaccines. 

Shuaib added to his statement, “We had developed nations that procured these COVID-19 vaccines and hoarded them, noting that at the point they were about to expire, they offered them for donation“. 

The health minister further added Nigeria would not use the COVID-19 vaccines with a short shelf life. A bulldozer crushed AstraZeneca shots that were packed in cardboard boxes and plastic at a dumpsite in Abuja. 

“We have successfully withdrawn 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccines. We have kept our promise to be transparent to Nigerians. The destruction today is an opportunity for Nigerians to have faith in our COVID vaccination programme,” he added. 

COVID-19 vaccination statistics in Nigeria: 

The African country has so far recorded a total of 231,000 confirmed cases of the deadliest COVID-19 virus. On the other hand, as per the statistics, more than 2,991 people were scummed to the COVID-19. 

Only 2 percent of the total population is fully inoculated, which is 4,153,915. At the same time, 4.3 percent of the population is vaccinated by taking atleast one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines.