FG SETS TO COMMENCE PHASE TWO OF COVID-19 VACCINATION NEXT WEEK

The Federal Government has announced it would start administering the second batch of COVID-19 Moderna vaccine doses from August 16.

This comes after the Nigerian Government, on August 2, received four million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines donated by the U.S.

This was announced by Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister for Information and Culture.

The Minister said the postponement of the vaccination exercise from August 10 to 16 was “purely administrative.’’

He said; “We have received 4,80,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, and we will commence administering the doses on Monday, August 16. The exercise was supposed to commence tomorrow, August 10, but we suspended it till Monday, and the reason is purely administrative. You see, when vaccines arrive the country, they are taken to National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).”

Mohammed noted that as the first batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine was fully administered without a hitch, the Moderna vaccines donated to the country by the U.S. were safe.

“I want to thank Nigerians for the way they responded to the first batch of Astrazeneca Vaccine. I can say, authoritatively, that we succeeded in administering the four million doses of the vaccine, and we do not have a single expired vaccine,” said Mr Mohammed. “They were all administered to the targeted population. I want to encourage Nigerians to come out also to take the Moderna vaccine.”

According to the NCDC, as of August 9, 2021, Nigeria has recorded 178,086 cases of covid-19 and 2,187 deaths.

Credit: Eons Intelligence