By Deborah Hassan
The Federal Government has denied that the COVAX facilitated AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccines which arrived Nigeria yesterday have been reserved exclusively for the ‘privileged’ in the society.
The vaccines were received on Tuesday, March 2, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, by top government officials. 3.94 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were shipped via the COVAX Facility, a partnership between CEPI, Gavi, UNICEF and WHO.
Speaking on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, March 3, the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib, said his agency was ensuring close monitoring of the vaccines to prevent ‘unauthorised access’ while waiting for the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to certify them safe for use in the country.
He said, “We are protecting the vaccines very closely, we’ve increased security around the vaccines to make sure that unauthorised access is not possible.
“We are waiting on NAFDAC. We feel that they are going to do all of the checks that are necessary and once they give us the green light, we will be ready to roll out the vaccines.”
He also stated, “I will tell you categorically that we have not allotted these vaccines to the rich people or to the people in the urban areas, absolutely not. Mr President has been very clear.
“Mr Vice President has also added his voice and the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force has communicated this at the Presidential Task Force media briefings. He has made it very clear in terms of who we are going to prioritise and I will repeat it here again that the first set of people who are going to be taking these vaccines are those people who have sacrificed in the last one year taking care of all Nigerians that have come down with COVID-19. So, the frontline health workers.”
While emphasising that the vaccines are totally harmless to one’s health, Shuaibu enjoined Nigerians to register on the website of the NPHCDA, which his disclosed has received over 2.3 million Nigerians registrations in the past few hours.
He also revealed that the vaccination exercise would commence from the National Hospital, Abuja, on Friday, with President Muhammadu Buhari and his vice, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo among its top recipients.
“On Friday, we are going to be launching the vaccines, we are going to be rolling them out at the treatment centres at the National Hospital. Our priority will be the health workers that are frontline. We are going to be giving these vaccines to first responders.
“We are also going to be looking at people outside of the health sector who are at risk of getting Covid-19. We are going to be looking at those strategic leaders like Mr President and the Vice-President, those people who will also want to take the vaccines publicly so that they can motivate the followers to take the vaccines, to convince them that the vaccines are very safe.”