Africa-Press – Botswana. The Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) is expected to dispose of more than 400 000 expired COVID-19 vaccines comprising mainly of Moderna and AstraZeneca.
Responding to reports that District Health Management Teams (DHMTs) are returning lot of vaccines on account of expiry, the Ministry’s Spokesperson Dr Christopher Nyanga confirmed the report adding that, “We encourage many Batswana who are unvaccinated or due for booster shots to visit the nearest vaccination site and take their jabs.”
Dr Nyanga attributed the expiry of the COVID-19 vaccines to the low turnout of people who want to be inoculated. According to Nyanga even those who are eligible for COVID-19 booster shots are turning out in discouragingly low numbers resulting in more vaccines reaching their expiry date.
“Although no computation of the exact costs for all expired vaccines has been made, we can reveal that the AstraZeneca vaccine was bought at $4 per dose while Moderna vaccine was bought at about $28.50 per dose,” Nyanga said.
The cost of the doses marked for disposal is approximately P20 million.
According to the latest update on the country’s COVID-19 weekly bulletin, 1,498 849 people are fully vaccinated while those who got the first dose are 1,689 385. Only 341 331 have taken a booster dose. While from 3 January 2020 to 9 May 2022, there have been 306,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 2,690 deaths, reported to WHO. And as of 8 May 2022, a total of 1,920,000 vaccine doses have been administered.
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