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The poorest nations rejected last month more than 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses distributed by the program global Covax, mainly due to its upcoming expiration date, an official from Unicef.
The figure shows the difficulties of vaccinating the world despite the growing supply of vaccines, with Covax closing in on delivering 1 billion doses to a total of nearly 150 countries.
“More than 100 million have been rejected in December alone,” he said. Etleva Kadilli, director of the Supply Division from the agency of the UNICEF, to legislators in the European Parliament.
The main reason for the rejection was the delivery of doses with a short shelf life, he said.
The poorest nations have also been forced to delay supplies because they don’t have enough storage facilities, Kadilli said, including a lack of refrigerators for vaccines.
UNICEF did not immediately respond to a query about how many doses have been rejected so far in total. In addition to the rejected doses, many others remain unused in storage facilities in poorer countries.
Unicef data on supplies and use of delivered vaccines shows that 681 million doses shipped are currently unused in some 90 poorer nations around the world, according to CARE, a charity, which drew the figures from a database. public data.
More than 30 poorer countries, including large states such as the Democratic Republic of Congo Y Nigeria, have used less than half the doses they have received so far, CARE said, citing data from UNICEF.
Covax, the global program co-led by the World Health Organization, has delivered so far 989 million Covid-19 vaccines to 144 countries, according to data from GAVI, a vaccine alliance, which co-directs the program.
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