By PHEPHILE MOTAU | 2022-01-23
Government will destroy about 10 000 expired Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccines.
This means the country has now run out of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines. The vaccines expired on Tuesday and will be destroyed.
The ministry of health will now only continue to roll out the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines as they are still in stock.
The country had received 302 400 from the United States (US) through the COVAX facility on July 27.
Information provided by the ministry reveals that a total of 261 352 people were vaccinated with the J&J vaccine, while 31 426 doses were used as booster shots.
This brings the total of doses which expired to 9 622, which indicates an overwhelming uptake of the vaccine at about 97 per cent.
Released
An earlier report showed that the expiry date for the vaccine was January 18. The report was released on January 15, three days before the vaccines expired.
It stated categorically that no J&J vaccines would be offered.
According to the report, the J&J vaccine is stocked out and the vaccination drive will continue with people being offered only AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines. It further revealed that no doses of J&J were expected in the country as yet.
Only the Pfizer vaccine will now be offered as booster shots. Senior Medical Officer Public Health Dr Bongiwe Malinga confirmed that the vaccines had expired and would no longer be used.
“The J&J doses expired and are not going to be used. Maybe we will get a new consignment in the future,” she said.
Fortunate Bhembe, who is the Deputy Director of Pharmaceutical Services, said they would now communicate with the World Health Organisation (WHO) on how they could get rid of the doses.
She said they had communicated some time back that due to vaccine hesitancy in the country, they were worried that about 40 000 doses would expire.
Bhembe said the number of expired vaccines was less than those they had anticipated.
“We had said 40 000 doses would expire, but we have done really well as a lesser number expired,” she said.
She said when they communicated with WHO, it was decided that the vaccines would be sent to other countries which had still not received any vaccines.
Bhembe said their first option was to send them to Rwanda, but while logistics were being sorted, the country received their vaccines.
She said the next destination was Zambia, but they also received vaccines.
Meanwhile, the report also shows that the ministry had 17 868 doses of Pfizer vaccine.
The expiry date for all Pfizer doses is January 31 (which is next week Monday).
The ministry stated that more doses of Pfizer vaccine were coming, but the date had not yet been confirmed. The country is currently offering these to people aged 12-17 as the first and second dose, and also as booster shots.
According to The Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), expiry dates on vaccines and medicines are extremely important to pay attention to.
Beyond that date, some of the ingredients could be useless, potentially leaving people vulnerable to the disease they are supposed to be protected against or the ingredients themselves could become harmful.
“With COVID-19 vaccines, however, manufacturers were extremely cautious with their estimate and vaccines were labelled with an expiry date of only three to six months, most vaccines have an expiry date of around three years,” the alliance stated.
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