DoH might discard over 100K doses about to expire by end of March
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While stats may report less daily Covid-19 infections like before, one cannot ignore or forget that the virus is still with us.
National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) have been reporting less Covid-19 related fatalities in this past week.
But having said that, Health Minister Dr. Joe Phaahla has still called out for people to continue coming forward for vaccination saying the virus is still with us and will probably be with us for a very long time.
He said this during a press briefing on Thursday where he also said it is sad that they have about 100K doses of vaccine which they will have to discard because it is about to reach an expiry date.
“There is a risk at this moment that just over 100 000 doses or so will have to be discarded which will reach expiry date by end of March so we are looking if there might be other alternatives which may be used”
Minister Phaahla also said he hopes more come forward for vaccination and booster shots because it would be very sad to see such huge amounts of doses be ling discarded.
“As of yesterday evening 31 879 000 doses of vaccines had been administered to 19,08 million adult individuals constituting 47,95% coverage of adults with at least one jab , 56,5% coverage for women and 43,5% coverage for men. Individual adults fully vaccinated are 17m at 43% coverage.”
He added that they are looking at reaching 50% vaccination of the population in the next coming weeks which is still way below the desired or planned 70% vaccination of the population for the country to reach immunity.
