|
 It said the vaccines had been allocated to the health directorate in
the city of Minya, about 220 km (137 miles) south of Cairo, where
18,400 vaccine packages with a value of more than 5 million Egyptian
pounds ($319,000) were found to be missing.
An inventory found nearly 5,000 more packages had been lost from the
depot because of storage at improper temperatures, a prosecution
statement added. It did not give the number of doses or type of
vaccine, but an earlier official statement said they were made by
China's Sinopharm.
Images posted on social media showed piles of white boxes scattered
along the water channel's banks in Bani Mazar province, north of
Minya.
The vaccines that were dumped went missing after being given by an
authorised pharmacist to the driver of a Health Ministry vehicle to
deliver to the Minya directorate, the prosecution said.
[to top of second column] |
 Initial investigations held the
pharmacist and an official at the directorate's
depot responsible for gross negligence, and they
were ordered detained for investigations along
with the driver after giving conflicting
accounts, the statement said.
Egypt is aiming to vaccinate 40 million of its
population of more than 100 million by the end
of the year, but has struggled to ramp up its
vaccination rate amid delays in supplies and
some vaccine hesitancy.
($1 = 15.6600 Egyptian pounds)
(Reporting by Haithem Borai; Writing by Aidan
Lewis; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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