Brazilian cities deny media reports that they used expired COVID-19 shots

Municipalities across Brazil denied a newspaper report that said health ministry data showed cities administered at least 26,000 expired doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, as reported in London South East.

The city of Maringá, cited in the Folha de S.Paulo story as being the municipality to have used the most expired doses, at over 3500, said the doses only appeared to have expired on public databases due to a delay in the registration of new data in the health ministry system.

According to the report, the expired vaccines came from batches imported from India by the public Fiocruz biomedical institute, or acquired through the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).