The federal government Monday said the 100,000 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech approved COVID-19 vaccines expected in the country by the end of January will no longer arrive until February.
Chairman Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 Boss Mustapha said this while speaking at a media briefing in Abuja.
He said efforts to access and deploy the COVID-19 vaccines were progressing.
“The effort to access and deploy vaccines is progressing and as already announced by COVAX, the initial 100,000 doses Nigeria is expecting will now arrive in the early weeks of February,” Mustapha said.
The federal government had announced that at least 100,000 doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines would arrive the country by the end of January through the COVAX co-financing public-private facility.
But several global health experts and bodies told Premium Times late December, 2020 that it is “almost impossible” for Nigeria to start receiving vaccines in January.
Distribution campaigns across Africa are not likely to begin until April, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated. Even then, fewer doses will be sent to African countries than are being shipped to the United States and Europe.
“It will be extremely terrible to see,” said John Nkengasong, the Africa CDC director.
Minister of State for Health Olorunnimbe Mamora also hinted that the vaccines may not arrive the country as soon as expected.
“We are working very hard to get vaccines for our people. It may not come soon enough, therefore we need to be alive to get the vaccines when they come,” Mamora said at a PTF briefing.
COVID-19 variant causing anxiety in UK found in Nigeria
Also at the briefing, the PTF chair said the new variant of the coronavirus currently causing anxiety in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world has been identified in Nigeria.
Mustapha said scientists found the variant in Nigeria after a long time of sequencing.
He said: “Over the last few weeks, the PTF has been closely following the rising number of infections reported daily in Nigeria and other jurisdictions.
“Similarly, our scientists have been sequencing the variants of the virus. There have been reports of cases with the B117 variant strain, first reported in the UK, found in Nigeria.”
The new variant detected in the UK in September and dubbed “lineage B.1.1.7” triggered the current exponential spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom.
