15th October, 2021
The United States and France have made a combined donation of about 4.2million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Nigeria.
Nigeria received 501,600 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine from the French government through the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility, Faisal Shuaib, head of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said.
In addition, Nigeria also received 434,400 doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccine from the African Union.
Both supplies were received last week, Shuaib said, adding that more were expected through the COVAX facility and the African Union.
Shuaib also said that Nigeria has received the U.S. donation of 3.6 million doses of the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
This comes two months after the U.S. shipped Moderna Inc vaccine to Nigeria.
Shuaib said on Oct. 5 the country had confirmation that it would receive 3.57 million doses of Pfizer vaccines within the next two weeks.
The shipment arrived on Thursday at Abuja airport.
The COVAX facility, backed by the World Health Organization and the GAVI vaccine alliance, aims to secure billions of doses for lower-income countries by the end of 2021.
About 2.3% of Nigerians or 2.54 million people have been fully vaccinated as of Thursday, while 4.7% of the population have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, Shuaib said.
“With more vaccines arriving in the country, it is my fervent hope that more people will turn up … so that Nigeria can rapidly progress towards attaining herd immunity,” Shuaib said.
From Dec. 1, Nigerian civil servants will be require to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative test for the disease to gain access to their offices, a presidential committee has said.
Nigeria, which has not tested widely for COVID-19, has so far recorded 208,404 confirmed infections and 2,761 deaths from the virus.