Covid-19: Nigeria destroys a million expired vaccines and points the finger at developed countries

Nigeria on Wednesday cremated more than a million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine given a few months ago by developed countries but whose expiry date was approaching and which have since expired, according to the authorities.

"We have successfully withdrawn 1.06 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine that had expired," said the director of the national agency in charge of immunization programs, Dr Faisal Shuaib.

“When these vaccines were offered to us, we knew they had a short lifespan, but we lived in an environment where vaccine supplies were very scarce,” said Faisal Shuaib.

At that time, "vaccines were not available because of the prevailing nationalism in vaccines, developed countries got hold of these vaccines and then put them in storage, then when they were about to expire, offered them to us, ”he accused.

The most populous country in Africa has so far fully vaccinated some 4 million people, or less than 3% of the adult population, a far cry from the government's goal of vaccinating 112 million people by the end of 2022.

Facing a fourth wave

Health authorities announced Monday that the country is facing a fourth wave of the new coronavirus, and called for "strict" compliance with health rules during the holiday season.

"Nigeria has recorded a 500% increase in the number of confirmed cases in the past two weeks across the country due to the Delta and Omicron variants," according to a statement from the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC).

The country has officially recorded some 225,000 cases and less than 3,000 deaths.

These figures are very low, compared to its 220 million inhabitants.

But they are largely underestimated, the number of tests carried out being very low.

Much of the population is unaware of Covid-19, and often attributes its symptoms to malaria, a disease that kills between 9 and 10 people every hour in Nigeria, according to health authorities.

And even so, the possibilities of performing free Covid-19 tests are almost non-existent, and the cost of a PCR test represents a month's salary for a majority of the population, who live in poverty.