Nigeria destroys more than one million expired COVID-19 vaccines

Nigeria destroys more than one million expired COVID-19 vaccines. “Vaccine nationalism” is being blamed for donated doses being supplied with extremely short use-by dates.

The number of cases of the coronavirus is growing rapidly in West Africa. According to Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control, the number of cases in Nigeria has rocketed by a staggering 500 per cent in the space of only two weeks.

Nigerian authorities have destroyed over 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine that have expired. On Wednesday, December 22, 1,066,214 doses were dropped into a landfill in the Nigerian capital. Only days ago the country said it will not accept any more vaccine doses that have a short shelf life.

Faisal Shuaib the executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) commented on the issue of short shelf lives. He explained that when the vaccines were offered: “we knew that they had a short self-life, but we were living in an environment where the supply of COVID-19 vaccines was very scarce”.

Shuaib has said that developed countries have delayed donating vaccines until they are near their expiry date.

The omicron variant was detected in Nigeria in late November and since then the number of cases has risen dramatically.

Professor Ferguson from the UK commented on the latest findings regarding the omicron variant. He said: “Our analysis shows evidence of a moderate reduction in the risk of hospitalisation associated with the Omicron variant compared with the Delta variant.

“However, this appears to be offset by the reduced efficacy of vaccines against infection with the Omicron variant.”

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