Nigerian authorities destroyed one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine because the vials were sent to the country too close to their expiration date.
The vaccines were publicly destroyed to assure a wary that they have been taken out of circulation said Reuters.
Authorities claimed that the international donors had delivered the vials too close to the deadline and therefore impossible to administer them in such a short time-frame in a country that has more than 200 million inhabitants.
The Nigerian government disclosed that the delivery of the vaccines took place in October but the doctors received the vials they noticed that they were expiring in November.
It was decided that there was no time to administer them to the population in a situation where in the last two weeks the cases have increased by more than 500% , with just 4% of the 200 million inhabitants vaccinated with two doses.
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In front of the representatives of the health authorities and journalists , the doses were destroyed by a bulldozer inside a square where they were kept in boxes.
According to the director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), the current situation is to blame for the ” vaccine nationalism ” in developed countries, which have grabbed vaccines and kept them “until when they were about to expire”, before donating them.