Authorities in Nigeria have destroyed about one million expired doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine even as the West African country’s vaccination rate has almost doubled in the last one week amid a spike in confirmed infections.
The expired doses — numbering 1,066,214 — were destroyed on Wednesday in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, a week after the nation said it will no longer accept donated COVID-19 vaccines with short shelf lives.
Faisal Shuaib, head of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said Nigeria was put in a difficult situation by developed countries who had “procured these vaccines and hoarded them in their stories (and) at the point they were about to expire, they offered them for donation.”
Vaccination is also rapidly picking up in the most populous country in Africa, which has set an ambitious goal of fully vaccinating 55 million of its 206 million citizens before February 2022, although only 2% have received their two doses.
The country is seeing a spike in confirmed infections, a 500% increase in cases in the past two weeks.
