Only 14m Nigerians have received first jab of Covid-19 vaccine and over 5m have had two doses

NIGERIA'S federal government has revealed that over 14m people have so far received at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine with over 5m getting two doses and less than half a million getting the third booster dose.

According to statistics just revealed by Dr Faisal Shuaib, the executive director of the National Primary HealthCare Development Agency (NPHCDA), so far, a total of 14,093,873 Nigerians have received their first shot of the vaccine. Meanwhile, 5,252,406 have received two shots, while 416,980 Nigerians have received their booster dose.

Pointing out that the numbers of vaccinated are increasing, Dr Shuaib said the rate of vaccination has increased from 100,000 per day as of December 2021, to 200,000 this month. He added that the sensitisation campaign on the Covid-19 vaccination exercise was yielding results in various centres across the country.

Dr Shuaib added: “Our record as of Tuesday January 25 shows that 14,093,873 eligible persons have received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine in Nigeria while 5,252,406 eligible Nigerians have been fully vaccinated. However, as one would expect, these results are not evenly distributed across the states of the federation.

"Our deep dive into state performances reveals that Nasarawa, Jigawa, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Ogun and Kwara have remained the top five performing states on Covid-19 vaccine uptake.

He pointed out that Jigawa and Lagos have each vaccinated about 1.5m Nigerians with the first dose, while the FCT, Nasarawa, Lagos and Delta states are presently leading on second dose administration with more than 10% of eligible populations in each of the states already

vaccinated. Dr Shuaib further spoke on the spread of Covid-19 variants, saying the reason for their emergence was due to the large proportion of the eligible population who have not yet been vaccinated.

Dr Shuaib said vaccination rates in many parts of the world had given the virus time to mutate and fight back. He also notified the Nigerian public that the current phase of Covid-19 mass vaccination would integrate the campaign with childhood immunisation and other public healthcare services.

“What this simply means is that alongside the Covid-19 vaccines, childhood vaccines will also be available at vaccination sites. Consequently, parents or guardians with children aged zero to 23 months are urged to take them along to the vaccination sites.

“The childhood vaccines protect against polio, whooping cough, measles, yellow fever, tetanus, tuberculosis and other childhood preventable diseases. This is to ensure that while we are trying so hard to control the transmission of Covid-19, we do not neglect other public healthcare services or even have outbreaks of childhood vaccine preventable diseases on our hands,” Dr Shuaib said.