Along with that, up to 1 million expired COVID-19 vaccines in Nigeria last month. (File)
Dakar, Senegal:
At least 200,000 COVID-19 vaccines have expired in Senegal without being used in the past two months, and another 200,000 are set to expire at the end of December because of slow demand, the head of their immunization program said. know on Monday.
African governments have been calling for more COVID-19 vaccines to help catch up with more affluent regions, where vaccine rollout has been massive for more than a year.
However, as the pace of supply has increased in recent weeks, some countries have struggled to keep up. Logistics problems, the short shelf life of vaccines coming from donors, and vaccine delays all kept doses out of reach.
To 1 million COVID-19 vaccines expired in Nigeria last month, Reuters revealed.
“The main problem is vaccine hesitancy,” said Ousseynou Badiane, Senegal’s head of vaccine deployment. “The number of cases is decreasing. They ask: ‘Why is it important to get vaccinated if the disease is gone’?”
Senegal has recorded more than 74,000 cases of COVID-19 and 1,886 deaths, much lower than the numbers seen in many of the countries harder hit by the virus. The rate of infection has slowed since the third wave in July, spurring a spike in vaccine demand. The country occasionally does not record new cases on a daily basis.
But indifference hurts the vaccination drive. Reuters figures show Senegal has administered almost 2 million doses of the vaccine to date, enough to fully immunize only about 5.9% of the population.
Badiane told Reuters it is currently vaccinating between 1,000 and 2,000 people a day, down from 15,000 during the summer. At this rate, it cannot use all the vaccines it has.
“We are not optimistic” about using another 200,000 doses before they expire at the end of the month, he said. “We don’t expect any increase in demand before that time.”
He did not specify the making of the vaccine.
Part of the problem is the short shelf life of vaccines that come from donors including the United States and China. Senegal refuses to use vaccines with a shelf life of less than three months, but even that poses difficulties.
Badiane hopes the government can introduce some kind of restriction on the unvaccinated to increase vaccination rates, including the use of health cards as many other countries have done.
“Without restrictions, the population would not be vaccinated,” he said.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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