.png)
Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton
The Ministry of Health has not yet ascertained the number of doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine that will have to be dumped after they expired at the end of October.
It's reported that more than 100,000 doses were unused when vaccination ended on Sunday.
Asked on Monday to provide an update on the number of expired doses of the medicine, Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton said he could not give details because he had not yet received a report, but he would have to "get that information later on".
The minister said although discarding expired vaccines was "regrettable", it was "not unusual".
The government was also forced to destroy more than 50,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses last month after they expired.
But Dr. Tufton has sought to defend his ministry's inoculation programme, noting that the expiration and resultant dumping of vaccine doses cannot be blamed on a lack of access to the medicine.
"We have doubled and tripled the locations around the country [and] I don't think it's an issue of communication because the communication has been out there. We have done house-to-house, we have done community blitzes - the Prime Minister, myself, others, the Members of Parliament. So I think we really have an issue now with trying to ensure that persons recognise the importance of this," he asserted.
There have been calls for Prime Minister Andrew Holness to introduce vaccine mandates to prevent the country from dumping more COVID-19 vaccines.
comments powered by Disqus
All feeds
