WATCH 1 million+ Covid vaccines destroyed by bulldozer

Nigeria has scrapped hundreds of thousands of expired coronavirus vaccine doses, destroying more than 1 million shots en masse after officials voiced complaints about the short shelf-life of jabs donated by Western states.

A massive quantity of out-of-date AstraZeneca vaccines was trashed at a dump site in the city of Abuja on Wednesday, with a bulldozer seen crushing the medicines in footage obtained by Reuters. Officials later announced the move, an apparent bid to quell fears that the expired immunizations were being administered to residents.

“We have successfully withdrawn 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccines. We have kept our promise to be transparent to Nigerians. The destruction today is an opportunity for Nigerians to have faith in our vaccination program,” said Faisal Shuaib, executive director at Nigeria’s the National Primary Health Care Development Agency.

Shuaib also told reporters that, despite knowing the doses would expire in just two weeks, Nigeria was effectively forced to take the donations, as Covid-19 vaccines remain scarce across much of Africa. The shots were delivered from multiple European countries participating in the COVAX vaccine sharing program.

Following a presidential committee meeting, Health Minister Osagie Ehanire said his country would no longer accept immunizations with such short shelf-lives.

Onlookers watch as 1 million expired AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine doses are destroyed at a dump site in Abuja, Nigeria, December 22, 2021. © Reuters / Afolabi Sotunde

Concerns over the expiration dates of the donated AstraZeneca shots were raised earlier this month, after Nigerian authorities noted the fast-approaching deadline to use up the vaccines. An earlier report in Reuters, however, suggested that some 1 million doses had already passed their date by November.

As of December 19, the World Health Organization estimated that nearly 13 million vaccine doses have been administered in Nigeria, which boasts a population in excess of 200 million, making it the continent’s most populous nation. The country has recorded more than 227,000 coronavirus infections and nearly 3,000 deaths since the pandemic kicked off in late 2019.

AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines are seen after 1 million expired doses were destroyed, in Abuja, Nigeria, December 22, 2021. © Reuters / Afolabi Sotunde

from RT World News https://ift.tt/3Fr0EPM

Comments

'Pillar of Shame' removed in Hong Kong

Authorities removed the University of Hong Kong’s ‘Pillar of Shame’ statue late on Wednesday, dismantling one of the few such sites left in China that commemorate an iconic protest, as Beijing extends its influence in the region. The eight-meter-tall monument at the city-state’s oldest university had depicted a pile of twisted bodies and was the site of multiple vigils in memory of the victims of the infamous crackdown over 30 years ago in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The university had agreed to remove the statue earlier this year “based on the latest risk assessment and legal advice,” adding that officials are “very concerned about the potential safety issues resulting from the fragile statue.” Read more Why the West cannot leave Hong Kong alone “The PillarOfShame is removed, while memory lives. We must remember what happened on June 4th, 1989. TiananmenMassacre,” Nathan Law, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who fled the region last year, wrote on Twitter. The statue’s re...

Ancient 140K-year-old ‘Dragon Man’ skull found hidden in Chinese well where it languished, abandoned, for decades

If legitimate, the new species, dubbed Homo longi, would be the most closely related known hominid to modern humans, filling in gaps between humanity and its Neanderthal ancestors as the search into mankind’s origins continues. Discovered in the Chinese city of Harbin, the skull retains some primitive features found in our distant ancestors, including a low brow and braincase plus a broad nose. However, it also shows some signs of more refined hominid characteristics, like flatter and more delicate cheekbones. The creature’s apparent mixture of more modern human traits and more Neanderthal-like characteristics has paleoanthropologists excited as it represents a potential step forward in the quest to find humanity’s less-distant predecessors, possibly representing an inflection point at which mankind veered off from its Neanderthal ancestors. Anterior and lateral views of the 'Harbin skull,' dubbed the 'Dragon Man,' which exhibits a mix of primitive and modern feature...

NASA deliberately created artificial glowing clouds in unusual weather control experiment

NASA recently unveiled a rather mesmerizing experiment, the Super Soaker mission, in which they fired a small rocket into the upper atmosphere which the agency then detonated to create artificial, glowing clouds… for science. High-flying clouds that shine in the darkness above the polar caps are known as polar mesospheric clouds, or PMCs. They are essentially swarms of ice crystals high in the atmosphere that catch sunlight in an unusual way. Research into these glowing clouds could yield important insights into the conditions of our atmosphere, a key component to maintaining life on Earth, as space traffic continues to gather pace. The members of the Super Soaker mission set out to create their own PMC at the worst possible time: January in the Arctic. This time of year is typically not conducive to PMC formation, meaning there wouldn’t be any interference from naturally occuring glowing clouds. © NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility The team launched a small, suborbital r...

EarthNeuZ

Search This Blog