The federal government will today, receive two million doses of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine donated by the European Union.
The formal handover of the vaccines to Nigeria is billed to take place at the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, National Strategic Cold Store, Abuja.
The donation is coming at the time government has begun another phase of mass vaccination in its determination to control COVID-19 pandemic.
It is equally coming six weeks after the government successfully withdrew about 1,066,214 expired Astrazeneca vaccine doses which were subsequently destroyed.
At the moment,over 14,093,873 eligible persons have so far received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria while 5,252,406 eligible Nigerians have been fully vaccinated.
Although there have been challenges of undue vaccine hesitancy in the country, the NPHCDA, through its Executive Director, Dr Faisal Shuaib,had recently expressed optimism that there would be improvement.
“We strongly believe that a more committed approach to implementing mass vaccination will lead to improved vaccine uptake.“This is why our current vaccination phase emphasizes state supervision support to ramp up vaccine uptake especially in low-performing states, ” Shuaib had said.
Recall that Nigeria introduced booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine on the 10th of December 2021, following the recommendation by WHO for people who have received two doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer Bio-N-Tech or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccines. So far, over 416,980 Nigerians have received their booster dose.
“Again, this is a clear indication that many more Nigerians are determined to achieve maximum protection against COVID-19,” Shuaib stated.
