The federal government has announced its readiness to take delivery of 16 million doses of vaccines later this month.
This was made known by the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib.
According to him, the vaccine would replace the initial 100,000 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech approved vaccines expected in the country.
“I am glad to inform you that preparations are underway for the COVID-19 vaccine introduction. The COVID-19 Technical Working Group which consists of experts from the PTF, the Federal Ministry of Health, the Nigerian Governors Forum, our NPHCDA staff and development partners have been working daily to monitor the level of preparedness towards the successful roll out of COVID-19 vaccines and subsequent implementation in Nigeria.
“The federal government of Nigeria is engaging in several discussions including with the African Union Commission to access COVID-19 vaccine. The African Union Commission through the African Acquisition Taskteam has approved approximately 41 million doses of a combination of the Pfizer Astrazeneca and the Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to be delivered between March and April 2021.
“Furthermore, the COVAXX facility has informed us that they will be supplying Nigeria with approximately 16 million doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine this month. This will replace the earlier communicated 100, 000 doses of Pfizer/mRNA vaccine which we all agreed was grossly inadequate”, Shuaib disclosed.
