Malawi destroys nearly 20,000 expired COVID-19 shots

Malawi burns 19,610 doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccines, saying the move would boost public confidence in jabs.

Malawi health authorities have destroyed 19,610 doses of expired AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, stating that the move would boost public confidence in the country’s vaccine programme. Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda put some of the vials of the expired doses into an incinerator to start the destruction on Wednesday at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, the capital. “We are destroying [these vaccines] because as government policy no expired health commodities are to be used,” she said. “Historically under the expanded immunisation programme of Malawi no expired vaccine has ever been used.”