Nigeria’s health minister, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said on Wednesday some COVID-19 doses donated by Western countries had a shelf life that left only weeks to administer the shots, Reuters reported. Ehanire said the health ministry had declined a request by some vaccine manufacturers to extend the shelf life of the doses by three months. He said if vaccines with a short shelf life arrive back-to-back or in large numbers, logistical bottlenecks occasionally arise. “Some manufacturers offered to extend the vaccine shelf life after the fact, by three months, a practice that, though accepted by experts, is declined by the Federal Ministry of Health because it is not accommodated in our standards,” he said. “Developing countries like Nigeria accept them because they close our critical vaccine supply gaps and, being free, save us scarce foreign exchange procurement cost,” he said.

Source: Nigerian Tribune December 09, 2021 02:15 UTC