Malawi received a batch of 360,000 doses of AstraZeneca in early March. The expired vaccines, on the other hand, are part of another batch, which arrived at the end of the same month and used for almost 80 percent, as reported by the BBC. The deadline of April 13, too close to delivery, did not allow for full use.
The World Health Organization had initially advised not to destroy the doses, changing its opinion later. The spokesman for the Ministry of Health of Malawi, Joshua Malango, had however replied to the WHO that the expired doses had already been removed from the so-called "cold chain", thus jeopardizing their correct conservation.
The inactivity of the vaccines received also affects South Sudan in Africa, which last month announced the expiration of 60,000 doses of AstraZeneca donated by the African Union after the immunization campaign, scheduled for March, was postponed due to logistical problems. .
Malawi confirms to date 34,231 infections and 1,153 victims out of a population of 18 million inhabitants. By eliminating overdue doses, health professionals hope to increase public low confidence in vaccines. Malawi destroyed 19,610 expired doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19, the first African country to do so, after the African Center for Disease Prevention and Control (Africa Cdc) confirmed that the expired doses are ineffective. The vaccines, produced by the Serum Institute of India with expiration on April 13, were delivered to Malawi on March 26, writes the BBC, in a batch of a total of 102,000 doses. The site of the local newspaper Nation Online posted on Twitter the photographs of the doses burned in an incinerator in the Kamuzu Central Hospital.in the capital Lilongwe.