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Some 9 million dosages of COVID-19 vaccines being kept in storage centers in Indonesia will be destroyed, as the nation backs down on its anti-COVID steps. The vaccines ended last month, the Indonesian Health Ministry stated.
“Our storage facilities are feeling the strain as they’re filled with expired doses,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in a Tuesday briefing Bloomberg reported. “That’s especially as we have a new campaign to push for basic vaccination for children across the country.”
Most of the vaccines were contributed from industrialized nations prior to their expiration dates, Sadikin stated, according to local media KOMPASS.com.
“When the vaccines were transferred to us, the average expiration date was between one and three months,” he said, adding that Indonesia accepted the free vaccines due to the outbreak situation at the time.
Sadikin mentioned the decrease in the nation’s vaccination rate as another cause for the vaccines being unused. The federal government’s preliminary objective was for 90 percent of the population to be totally vaccinated, and 80 percent to get a booster dose.
“We discussed with whether the vaccination rate was attainable,” he noted. “It would be more realistic to have 70 percent of the population fully vaccinated and 50 percent receive a booster shot.”
The Indonesian federal government raised the outside mask required and waived pre-departure coronavirus screening for foreign tourists on May 18. Mask using will stay obligatory for indoor activities and on public transportation, reported Reuters.
Indonesia is not the only nation that saw contributed vaccines go to waste. In December last year, Nigeria destroyed over a million ended COVID-19 dosages and revealed that it would no longer accept contributed vaccines with brief life span.
The United Nations exposed in January that more than 100 million contributed COVID-19 vaccine dosages were turned down by bad nations, mostly due to their brief service life, reported Reuters.
About 15.5 countless the turned-down vaccines were ruined, the U.N. specified, including that the recipient countries needed to postpone materials due to an absence of storage centers for the vaccines.
In November last year, the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) and the U.N.-backed COVAX program released a joint statement stating that the quality of contributions “needs to improve.”
“The majority of the donations to-date have been ad hoc, provided with little notice and short shelf lives. This has made it extremely challenging for countries to plan vaccination campaigns and increase absorptive capacity,” they stated.
“To achieve higher coverage rates across the continent of Africa, and for donations to be a sustainable source of supply that can complement supply from AVAT and COVAX purchase agreements, this trend must change.”
They advised donors to send contributed dosages in large volumes and have a minimum of 10 weeks service life when they show up in-country, in addition to notify recipient nations of the accessibility of the dosages not less than 4 weeks prior to their arrival.
H/T The Epoch Times
