Three officials detained for dumping large number of COVID-19 Sinopharm doses on wastewater canal in Upper Egypt

CAIRO – 10 October 2021: Egyptian Public Prosecution ordered the detention of 3 people accused of negligence in an incident that went viral on social media about finding dumped a large number of doses of Coronavirus vaccine Sinopharm in Bani Mazar city of Minya, Upper Egypt.

 

One of the locals in the city shot a video of the dumped doses on a small wastewater canal and posted it on social media platforms where the video, then, went viral on Thursday.

 

As per the initial investigations, the number of dumped packages reached 13,412 and are not suitable for use because they must be kept at specific cooling temperatures and were exposed to weather factors that affected their effectiveness. These doses cost LE 5,023,200, the investigations added.

 

After forming a committee to make an inventory of all the quantities inside the warehouses of Minya Health Directorate, it is revealed that another quantity of 4,988 packages was missing from the stores.

 

 The accused people are a pharmacist at the holding company for the production of vaccines and sera and drugs (VACSERA), a storekeeper, and a driver. 

 

The pharmacist is accused of negligence because he gave the shipment of the vaccine to the truck driver without going to deliver it by himself and then the driver gave it to the storekeeper without counting the packages of the doses.

 

The three accused people are now under interrogation.

 

The dumped doses were found 10 days after the Minister of Health Hala Zayed announced on 29 September 2021 that Egypt received a total of 4,424,400 Covid-19 vaccines from China's Sinopharm Group as “part of the state's efforts to provide jabs against the pandemic.”

 

 
One million doses of the vaccine were received at Cairo International Airport Tuesday evening from the Chinese company along with 3,000 liters of raw ingredients enough to manufacture 4.6 million doses, according to Assistant Health Minister and Health Ministry Spokesman Khaled Megahed.


 

All vaccines that reach Egypt are approved by the World Health Organization and the Egyptian Drug Authority for emergency use, he said, stressing that all shipments are tested at the authority labs before distribution among the 1,100 vaccination centers across the country.

 

Egypt received up to 60 million doses so far of different covid-19 vaccines according to the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health Khaled Mgahed, on October 5, 2021.