Over 7.5 million Pfizer vaccines brought to Sri Lanka during the Covid-19 pandemic are to be destroyed since they have expired.

The stocks of the expired vaccines are now stored in a container outside the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) premises.

Following the spread of Covid-19, 20,088,050 doses of Pfizer vaccine were brought to Sri Lanka on several occasions between July and December of 2021.

A total of 7.5 million unused Pfizer vaccines were stored in the NBTS’s freezers for about seven months.

Arrangements were made to remove the vaccine stock from October 31 last year after it expired.

However, since these vaccines were stored in the storage facilities of the NBTS, the institution had to pay an additional electricity bill of nearly one million rupees.

Accordingly, the NBTS has informed the Epidemiology Unit on May 31 to get this stock of vaccines removed.

On the same day, the NBTS has disconnected the supply of electricity to the storage facility.

The authorities of the Epidemiology Unit last week removed the vaccine stock from the NBTS storage and stored it in a container outside the NBTS premises.

The Epidemiology Unit has requested the NBTS to give them some time to remove the vaccines container from the premises.