Nigeria authorities have destroyed over 1 million doses of expired AstraZeneca shots.
While reporters watched on, cardboard boxes with AstraZeneca shots were crushed with a bulldozer at a dump site in Abuja.
Health authorities had said that some COVID-19 doses donated by rich Western nations had a shelf life that left only weeks to administer the shots.
The exercise was to curry public confidence in authorities, as vaccine hesitancy and concern over the safety of the vaccines rages.
Faisal Shuaib, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency executive director told reporters that a shortage of vaccine supplies on the continent, had compelled Nigeria to take delivery of doses with short shelf span.
“We have successfully withdrawn 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccines.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 vaccination programme,” Shuaib said.
Governments on the continent are racing with time to get vaccine deliveries to inoculate their citizens against the fast-spreading virus. The lower vaccination levels raise the risk of higher infection and death rates from COVID-19, especially as new, fast-spreading variants emerge such as Omicron.
President Nana Addo Dankwa at the European Union Parliament in France, noted that whereas 70% of Europeans have vaccinated, the number of Africans who have fully vaccinated is less than 10%.