The long anticipated COVID-19 vaccines were delivered to Nigeria on Tuesday, March 2. The 3.93 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines are part of a total of 16 million doses apportioned to Nigeria by the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Assess (COVAX) Facility of the African Union, with the balance expected to be delivered in the coming months. These vaccines will be replacing the initial 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines which the Nigerian Government announced that it was expecting by February 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nigeria and\nKenya were billed to receive the COVAX Facility vaccines on the same day. Nigeria\nis the third West African country after Ghana and Cote d\u2019Ivoire to receive the\nCOVAX vaccines. COVAX, one of the three pillars of the Access to COVID-19 Tools\n(ACT) Accelerator, backed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is aimed at\ndistributing about two billion doses of vaccines across 92 low and\nmiddle-income countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Federal\nGovernment has stated that it expects to receive doses of other types of\nvaccines, to cater to Nigerians. However, it is unclear from where and when the\nNigerian government plans to procure enough vaccines to cater to all eligible\npersons within its population of 200 million people. Last weekend, South\nAfrican President, Cyril Ramaphosa had announced a programme of COVID\nvaccination for citizens of his country, indicating how South Africa will\nreceive close to 40 million doses of COVID vaccines, putting out specific\ndetails of locations from which these vaccines will be administered. Nigerians\npoint to this as evidence of seriousness of a government that intends to tackle\nthe COVID pandemic, and worry that their own government appears unserious with\nthe matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Federal\nMinistry of Health, on Monday, March 1, launched a 5-point T.E.A.C.H. strategy\nfor deployment of the vaccines. The strategy is described as combining the\ntraditional method of vaccinating the target population using available data\nsources, electronic self-registration for health workers and the public,\nassisted electronic registration, concomitant e-registration during walk-in\nvisits to designated health facilities, in addition to house-to-house\nregistration. Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire speaking at the launch of\nthe strategy, stated that priority will be given to frontline healthcare\nworkers in the deployment of the vaccines. He added that the government\u2019s goal\nis to introduce the vaccine in a phased and equitable manner, and ultimately\nvaccinating all eligible Nigerians (18 years and above) within the next two\nyears. It will be recalled that the World Health Organisation (WHO) advised all\ncountries to limit vaccination to persons above 18 years for the time being,\nuntil research and studies are completed on any possible effect on growing\nchildren. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Executive\nDirector of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr.\nFaisal Shuaib speaking at the joint national briefing of the Presidential Task\nForce on COVID-19 on Monday, March 1, stated that the vaccines would be\nadministered in four phases. In the first phase, health workers and other frontline\nworkers are expected to receive the vaccine. Also, strategic leaders such as\nthe President, Vice President, ministers, governors, religious and traditional\nleaders are expected to receive the vaccine at this stage to boost public\nconfidence. In the second phase, adults aged 50 years and above and those with\nco-morbidities aged 18-49 years will receive the vaccine, while phase three\nwill focus on persons in States and Local Government Areas with high disease\nburden who miss the first two phases. The fourth phase will focus on all other\neligible persons, as more vaccines become available. To facilitate the\nadministration of the vaccines, the Federal Government also launched the\nElectronic Management of Immunisation Data (EMID) system, an e-registration\nplatform for eligible individuals who are interested in taking the vaccine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The long anticipated COVID-19 vaccines were delivered to Nigeria on Tuesday, March 2. The 3.93 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines are part of a total of 16 million doses apportioned to Nigeria by the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Assess (COVAX) Facility of the African Union, with the balance expected to be delivered in the coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[239,241,237,238,240],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-covid-19-vaccines-global-assess-covax","tag-national-primary-health-care-development-agency-nphcda","tag-nigeria-receives-covid-19-vaccines","tag-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccines","tag-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1949,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions\/1949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}