TheCable

Faisal Shuaib, executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), says around one million expired doses of the COVID vaccine will be destroyed “in the full glare of the public”.

A report on the doses had surfaced on December 8, with around one million shots said to have expired in November.

Reacting to the report at the time, the federal government had attributed the development to the short shelf life of the vaccines.

While speaking at a media briefing on Monday, Shuaib said the federal government is working on a protocol to destroy the expired doses to ensure that the exercise is in line with environmental safety standards.

“The expired vaccines had actually been withdrawn way ahead of when they were supposed to expire and NAFDAC was consulted,” he said.

“So, we’re working with NAFDAC to schedule a date for when this destruction will take place. There are protocols that NAFDAC and the Abuja environmental protection agency will have to go through.

“Once all of those are aligned, we’ll communicate to the general populace and particularly to the media when that destruction will take place so that it will take place in the full glare of the general public, so Nigerians will know that these vaccines were carefully safeguarded and are being destroyed because there is no intention to use them.”

When asked how many expired shots in total, he said “right around a million doses”.

Shuaib also insisted that “no person in Nigeria has ever and will ever be vaccinated with expired vaccines”, adding that the federal government will no longer accept vaccines with short shelf life.