"The batch which had expired has been withdrawn from our system and has been destroyed," said Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda during a visit to the Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe where she personally placed some of the 16,910 defunct vaccines in an incinerator.
Malawi has received 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca shot under the Covax vaccine sharing facility from India and the African Union (AU).
Chiponda said the AU batch had two weeks of shelf life. "Unfortunately, in those two weeks, we were not able to absorb everything, mostly due to the propaganda against the AstraZeneca vaccine.
"We tried to assure Malawians and give them faith in the vaccine," Chiponda added."
Since Malawi launched its vaccination drive in March, it has inoculated 300,000 people out of its drive to reach 11 million by the end of the year.
"We don't want to lose any vaccine because we have a lot of people to vaccinate but ... we have to remove all expired drugs from the system," Chiponda said.
Doubts
Scepticism has dogged take-up of the AstraZeneca shot. Austria this week became the third European country after Norway and Denmark to drop the Anglo-Swedish jab following cases of severe blood clots in people who had received the dose.
Despite the doubts about AstraZeneca, the UN says richer countries must send more vaccines to Africa.
"The security council expresses concern that Africa has only received two percent of all vaccines administered globally," said text of a statement adopted during a session on peace and security in Africa.
Africa's populations have fared better during the pandemic than other regions.
Nearly 130,000 deaths have been reported on the continent out of a global figure of 3.4 million.
