The Federal Government of Nigeria will receive 2 million doses of J&J Covid-19 vaccine today, Monday, February 7. The vaccines were donated by the European Union.
The formal handover of the vaccines to Nigeria is scheduled to take place 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 COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
At the moment, over 14,093,873 eligible persons have so far received the first dose of 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 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 had said.
According to him, till date, Nigeria has not recorded any death arising from 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.
