CAIRO —
Egypt’s public prosecution mentioned on Sunday it had ordered the arrest of three individuals after hundreds of unused COVID-19 vaccines have been discovered dumped alongside a water channel.
It mentioned the vaccines had been allotted to the well being directorate within the metropolis of Minya, about 220 km south of Cairo, the place 18,400 vaccine packages with a worth of greater than US$319,000 have been discovered to be lacking.
A list discovered practically 5,000 extra packages had been misplaced from the depot due to storage at improper temperatures, a prosecution assertion added. It didn’t give the variety of doses or kind of vaccine, however an earlier official assertion mentioned they have been made by China’s Sinopharm.
Pictures posted on social media confirmed piles of white containers scattered alongside the water channel’s banks in Bani Mazar province, north of Minya.
The vaccines that have been dumped went lacking after being given by a certified pharmacist to the motive force of a Well being Ministry car to ship to the Minya directorate, the prosecution mentioned.
Preliminary investigations held the pharmacist and an official on the directorate’s depot chargeable for gross negligence, they usually have been ordered detained for investigations together with the motive force after giving conflicting accounts, the assertion mentioned.
Egypt is aiming to vaccinate 40 million of its inhabitants of greater than 100 million by the tip of the 12 months, however has struggled to ramp up its vaccination price amid delays in provides and a few vaccine hesitancy.
(Reporting by Haithem Borai; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Enhancing by Peter Cooney)
