The Federal Government has confirmed that the expected four million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines will arrive the country on Tuesday morning.
The vaccines are expected to depart India on Monday, March 1 and arrive in Abuja at 11 am on Tuesday, March 2.
These were revealed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force, PTF on COVID-19, Mr. Boss Mustapha, on Saturday in Abuja while evaluating the country’s fight against the disease.
“Barring any change in the delivery plans released to PTF by UNICEF,” said Mustapha.
“The logistics arrangements are being handled by UNICEF. It will depart Indian on 1st March 2021 and arrive Abuja on 2nd March 2021 by 11 am. This is coming from the COVAX facility and we are supposed to have 16 million doses in the first quarter from the COVAX facility and we expect that they will supply all the range, they will supply 84 million doses from the COVAX facility which is free of charge and it will cover 20 per cent of the Nigerian population,” he added.
It is worthwhile to note that Nigeria is expecting 16 million doses of the Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccines through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Assess Facility (COVAX), a World Health Organization-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 immunize three per cent of their populations.
Mustapha said all the vaccines Nigeria is expecting from the COVAX facility would be AstraZeneca which has a good range in terms of “storage for us because it uses +2 to +8 per cent of refrigeration”.
The SGF further expressed optimism that by the time the country get 40 per cent of its population vaccinated in 2021 and another 30 per cent in 2022 which is cumulative of 70 per cent, Nigeria will be arriving at herd immunity.
