Nigeria To Receive COVID-19 Vaccines Tuesday

The Federal Government has confirmed that the expected four million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines will arrive the country on Tuesday morning.

The Chairman of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, made this known Saturday.

“I can assure you that the vaccines are coming and they are coming very quickly barring any change in the delivery plan that has been released to us by UNICEF,” Mustapha said.

“We believe that our vaccines should depart India on the 1st of March, 2021 at 10:30pm and arrive Abuja on 2nd of March by 11:10 am.”

Nigeria is expecting 16 million doses of the Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccines through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Assess Facility (COVAX), a World Health Organisation-backed programme set-up to divide about two billion doses of vaccines across 92 low-and middle-income countries.

The facility promised access to vaccines for up to 20 per cent of participating countries’ population with an initial supply beginning in the first quarter of the year to immunise three per cent of their populations.

The Nigerian government had earlier announced that the first four million doses of the vaccines will arrive the country by the end of February.

Nigeria’s health minister, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, on Wednesday admitted that the country may have to wait till March to receive its first doses of the vaccines.

Ghana received 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines on Wednesday, making it the first country to benefit from the COVAX programme.

Ivory Coast, a country with over 32,000 COVID-19 cases and 188 deaths, also received over 500,000 doses of the Oxford-Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Friday.

One year after Nigeria recorded its index case, more than 155,000 people have been infected with the virus in the country, data from Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) shows.

Over 1,900 deaths have also been recorded.