Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, has revealed that one month after Nigeria took its first batch of Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines, 963,802 persons have so far been vaccinated as at April 5.
He noted that the overall objective was to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the population between 2021 and 2022.
“As at April 5, 2021, 963,802 persons in Nigeria had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The overarching objective is to vaccinate 70% of Nigeria’s population between 2021 and 2022”, he said.
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The SGF, however, lamented that the global hope offered by the arrival of vaccines has been threatened by the detection of variants of concern as described by the WHO (B.1.1.7; B.1.351; P.1).
He said these variants are associated with increase in the spread of the virus (transmissibility), and account for the third wave of infections currently occurring in Germany, France, United Kingdom, Brazil and a host of other countries.
According to him, there is some evidence that existing vaccines are less effective against the variants.
