According to the Regional Health Directorate, the vaccines, as of Tuesday April 13, have exhausted their 6-month life span.
In an interview on Citi FM, the Director in charge of Public Health, Hilarious Abiwu explained that the AstraZeneca vaccines which were produced on October 16, 2020, are expected to be used within six months, after which they are likely to lose their potency.
“This batch of vaccines was manufactured on 16 October 2020 and FDA approves that we can use it within six months. So effectively, the sixth month will be the 16th [of April], so for safety reasons, FDA anticipated that we shouldn’t vaccinate to the very last day. So we had three clear days to the six months date,” he explained.
The Northern Region began its COVID-19 vaccination exercise on March 26, 2021, with some 17,000 doses targeting health workers.
According to the regional health directorate, 30.1 percent of health workers in the region took the vaccine by the close of the seventh day.
Health officials were hopeful of exhausting their vaccine supply, but this was not possible as some districts still had some doses which were yet to be administered.
“As of Tuesday, the vaccine we had in stock had been completely administered. But we needed to do an audit of the data in terms of the number of doses that we have on record as having been given out and also vaccines that we have received, that was when we found out that there were a few districts that had a few vials of the vaccine that we couldn’t use as at the close of yesterday", he added.