The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) will no longer allow COVID-19 vaccines with short expiry time into the country.
Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, who disclosed this while reacting to the recently expired one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country said NAFDAC is working with international partners to ensure that Nigeria gets vaccines with extended expiration dates.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines were recently destroyed at the Gosa dumping site in Abuja by NAFDAC, National Primary Health Care Development Agency and the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Adeyeye said the expired therapies which had very short expiration dates were worsened by logistic challenges even as the World Health Organisation (WHO), has warned that the risk posed by the Omicron variant is growing higher with 11 per cent upsurge in infections reported globally the previous week.
“The rapid circulation of the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 worldwide is creating a tsunami of cases.”’ WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said.
The WHO boss said reaching a 70 percent global vaccination target could help end the acute phase of the pandemic.
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