Three detained in Egypt after coronavirus vaccines found dumped

Images posted on social media showed piles of white boxes scattered along the water channel's banks in Bani Mazar province, north of Minya

Egypt's public prosecution said on Sunday it had ordered the arrest of three people after thousands of unused COVID-19 vaccines were found dumped along a water channel, Qazet.az reports quoting Reuters.

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.