The Nigerian government is expecting to receive about 3,930,910 doses of Pfizer-Bio-N Tech COVID-19 vaccine in donation from the United States Government through the COVAX facility next month, reported The Premium Times.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, the Executive Director of the Nigerian National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), said the country will also receive 3,577,860 doses of Pfizer-Bio-N Tech vaccine from the COVAX facility and 29,850,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine from the African Union Commission by the end of September.
These are in addition to 3,924,000 doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca being expected by the end of July or early August from the COVAX facility.
Dr. Shuaib said that the Nigerian healthcare agency is putting in place all necessary logistics for storage, distribution, security, and accountability for the range of vaccines it is expecting.
He said that the Nigerian government has procured 60 units of U701 ultra cold chain equipment and about 37 of them have been deployed to all the 36 States and FCT in preparation to receive all COVID-19 vaccines that would require an ultra-cold temperature of below 40 to 85 degrees.
Commenting on the detection of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in Nigeria, Dr. Shuaib said it was important that Nigerians continued to observe non-pharmaceutical or public health measures such as wearing of face masks, social distancing, and hand hygiene in order to curb the transmission of the disease while awaiting additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
The Nigerian government began the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in March this year with approximately 4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines from the WHO-backed COVAX facility. About 3,938, 945 eligible persons across 36 states and FCT have been successfully vaccinated against COVID-19 so far.
Nigeria had ended the first phase of its strategic COVID-19 vaccination plan and is preparing to commence the second phase in the next few weeks.
