Covid-19: The FG has decided to postpone the second round of vaccinations

The Presidential Steering Committee on Covid-19 has announced that the second batch of Covid-19 Moderna vaccine doses donated by the US government will be postponed in order to intensify the virus’s fight.

In a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, the Director Press, PSC, on Covid-19, Willie Bassey, confirmed this.

The exercise was originally set to start on Tuesday, August 10, 2021, at the Federal Medical Centre in Jabi, Abuja.

The PSC announced the start of the virus’s second phase of vaccination after receiving four million doses of moderna vaccine donated by the US government through COVAX.

Joe Biden, the US President, pledged in May to share 80 million vaccines with countries around the world to protect the world’s most vulnerable people. Africa is expected to receive 25 million of this total.

The first shipments have arrived in Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and now Nigeria.

The exercise was postponed, according to Bassey, due to unforeseen circumstances.

“This is to announce the postponement of the national flag-off of phase 11 vaccination program earlier scheduled for Tuesday this week due to unforeseen circumstances,” the statement reads in part.

It stated, “A new date will be communicated.”

The government confirmed the third wave of the pandemic in the country, following an increase in Covid-19 cases linked to highly transmissible delta variants.

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According to data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the country had 177,615 coronavirus cases and 2,185 fatalities as of Aug. 7.

Despite the fact that the country began immunizing its citizens against Covid-19 in early March, only 3,938,945 people have been vaccinated across 36 states and the FCT.

2,534,205 people have received their first dose of the vaccine, and 1,404,205 have received their second dose of the vaccine.

Nigeria began vaccination with the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which is given in two doses. After the first jab, a person is required to return for a second jab a few weeks later.

The government announced the end of vaccination of the first batch after approximately four million doses of vaccines delivered through the COVAX facility were exhausted.

COVAX is a United Nations-backed initiative that aims to provide vaccines to up to 20% of the populations of participating countries.

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The Nigerian government set an ambitious goal of vaccinating 40% of the country’s over 200 million people by the end of 2021, and 70% by the end of 2022, in order to achieve herd immunity against the virus.

“The vaccine roll-out will be in four phases, beginning with health workers, frontline workers, the Covid-19 rapid response team, the laboratory network, policemen, petrol station workers, and strategic leaders,” said Dr. Faisal Shuaib, executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA.