Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency and the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency, have destroyed 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.
The vaccines were destroyed at the Gosa Dumping site in Abuja.
This batch is said to be part of the 2.5million vaccine doses received on the 11th and 29th of October. Only 1,527,886 of that batch was administered.
The batches of the vaccine destroyedq expired in November.
The NPHCDA Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer, Dr Faisal Shuaib at the destruction site, commended health workers on their efforts to help administer the vaccines, describing them as the “heroes of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign because they worked round the clock to make sure the vaccines were used maximally”
Earlier in December, the NPHCDA had announced that it would destroy expired COVID-19 vaccines after they had been pulled from circulation.
Authorities also acknowledged that logistics and bottlenecks involved in clearing the vaccines also led to a loss of valuable time in distributing the vaccines across the country.