By Metohuey Michael Adoglo
The Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, stated this on Thursday in Abuja as the Africa Centre for Disease Control, an agency of the African Union, kicked against the introduction of booster doses in African countries.
The United States Embassy has received 2.5 million Pfizer vaccine doses in Abuja, which were presented to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency for cold storage.
The vaccines will be distributed to over 3,000 health facilities across the country.
The mission in a statement on Thursday, titled, ‘US donates additional 2.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Nigeria this week,’ said the vaccines would be available at major markets, shopping malls, event centers, motor parks, airports, places of employment, and religious institutions as part of Nigeria’s mass vaccination campaign.
Nigeria had on March 5,2021 commenced COVID-19 vaccination with a total of 3.94 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX institute of India.
This was followed by a vaccination break due to the ban of vaccine transportation by the Serum Institute of India, the main supplier to the COVAX facility.
In August, Nigeria resumed her second phase of vaccine with donations of moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines which were received through donations from foreign countries.
The country also received several doses of the J and J vaccine which it procured through a joint partnership with other African Union countries through the AVATT facility.
So far in Nigeria, only a total of 3,867,815 have been fully vaccinated with a total of 7,449,989 taking the first dose.
The Nigerian government had also mentioned its plan to vaccinate about 70 perc ent of its population by 2022, a move which experts had doubted following the country’s low vaccination rate.
The Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 a few days ago directed vaccinated Nigerians to go for booster doses following detection of three cases of Omicron variant of the virus in the country.