Nigeria destroys 1 million expired doses of COVID-19 vaccine

Authorities in Nigeria have destroyed about one million expired doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine even as the West African country's vaccination rate has almost doubled in the last week amid a spike in confirmed infections.

The expired doses — numbering 1,066,214 — were destroyed on Wednesday in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, a week after the country said it will no longer accept donated COVID-19 vaccines with short shelf lives.

Reporters and health officials watched at a dump site as a bulldozer crushed the shots that were packed in cardboard boxes and plastic. 

Faisal Shuaib, head of Nigeria's National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said Nigeria was put in a difficult situation by developed countries that had "procured these vaccines and hoarded them … [and] at the point they were about to expire, they offered them for donation."

Vaccination is also rapidly picking up in the most populous country in Africa, which has set an ambitious goal of fully vaccinating 55 million of its 206 million citizens before February 2022, although only two per cent have received their two doses so far. 

The country is seeing a spike in confirmed infections, a 500 per cent increase in cases in the past two weeks.

Since the start of the pandemic, Nigeria has reported 227,378 COVID-19 cases and 2,989 deaths.