MEDIATRACNET
Nigeria now has sufficient stock of vaccines to ramp up vaccination for about 50 percent of its target population, the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, has said.
Shuaib confirmed this while briefing the National Economic Council on the status of the country’s COVID-19 vaccine roll-out.
He said over 100 million doses of COVID–19 vaccines from COVAX, African Union and some other countries, received recently has helped the country build sufficient stock of vaccines to ramp up the national vaccination exercise.
“The total eligible population of Nigerians for the vaccine is over 111 million. Given the availability of vaccines, we have started rolling out a plan to vaccinate 50 percent of Nigerians, 18 years and above by January 31, 2022,’’ he said.
The NPHCDA boss said there would be a scaling up of over 3,000 health facilities nationwide.
the Director-General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Ifedayo Adetifa, who also made a presentation to the council.
He urged Nigerians to continue to maintain and sustain the COVID-19 response, especially as it entered the holiday period where there would be travels within and outside the country and mass events to herald the holiday season.
“The country should maintain visibility of the outbreak by testing, continuing to encourage adherence to public health and social measures, encourage vaccination and address vaccine hesitancy,” he said.
He added that the Delta variant of the COVID-19 was still the dominant strain of concern in the country. (NAN)
