Nigeria has finalised plans to take delivery of its own doses of the Covid-19 vaccines in the next couple of days.
The country’s Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19, Boss Mustapha confirmed this in an exclusive interview with News Central TV.
Mister Mustapha says barring any changes in the UNICEF’s delivery schedule, the vaccines will be arriving in the West African country by 2nd of March.
According to the SGF, about 4 million doses are coming from the COVAX facility, which is the first batch of about sixty million being expected.
He however warned that in spite of the arrival of the vaccines, Covid-19 protocols remain in place.
Nigeria is the country with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in West Africa.
The country marked one year since it recorded its first case on Saturday, 27th of February. Nigeria recorded its first case on the 27th of February 2020, sparking hundreds of thousands more cases and almost two thousand deaths.
The distribution of the vaccines will be done by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), in collaboration with the country’s centre for disease control, NCDC.
So far, the country has announced 155,417 cases of COVID-19 with 1905 deaths recorded. Nigeria’s fatality rate currently stands at 1.22%, lower than the African average of 2.5-2.6%.