The Nigerian government will on Monday, February receive 2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine donated by the European Union, EU.
The official handover of the vaccines to Nigeria is billed to hold at the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA’s National Strategic Cold Store, Bill Clinton Drive, Airport Road, Abuja.
The donation is coming at the time government has begun another phase of mass vaccination in its determination to control the spread of coronavirus.
It is equally coming six weeks after the government successfully withdrew about 1,066,214 of expired Astrazenecal vaccine donated to it by foreign agencies and governments. The withdrawn vaccines were subsequently destroyed last December.
At the moment, over 14,093,873 eligible persons have so far received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria while 5,252,406 eligible Nigerians have been fully vaccinated.
Although there have been challenges of undue vaccine hesitancy in the country, the NPHCDA, through its Executive Director, Dr Faisal Shuaib, had recently expressed optimism that there would be an improvement.
“We strongly believe that a more committed approach to implementing mass vaccination will lead to improved vaccine uptake.
“This is why our current vaccination phase emphasizes state supervision support to ramp up vaccine uptake especially in low-performing states,” Shuaib said.
Recall that Nigeria introduced a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine in December 2021, following the recommendation by the World Health Organisation for people who have received two doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer Bio-N-Tech or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccines.”
So far, over 416,980 Nigerians have received their booster dose.
”Again, this is a clear indication that many more Nigerians are determined to achieve maximum protection against COVID-19,” Shuaib had also said.
According to him, to date, Nigeria has not recorded any death arising from the COVID-19 vaccination.
“This should further serve to convince everyone that COVID-19 vaccines are safe. Let me, therefore, remind all Nigerians, that the second and booster doses are critical to achieving high protection against the virus especially as it keeps mutating,” the NPHCDA’s boss had said.
