COVID-19 vaccination is still uncertain in 11 states as the Federal Government says it has yet to receive the lists of their frontline health workers. The states include Kano, Kogi, Osun, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Katsina and Taraba.
This is according to a progress chart sent to the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency on Saturday tagged, ‘Update from COVID-19 Vaccination Operations Room.’ But some of the states in their separate reactions faulted the NPHCDA, saying they had submitted the lists. They also blamed the agency for the confusion. Recall that the Federal Government had on Tuesday received 3.94 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from COVAX facility, an initiative co-led by the Vaccine Alliance, GAVI and the World Health Organisation.
The facility was set up to ensure equitable access to a COVID-19 vaccine by dividing about two billion doses across 92 low-and middle-income countries. The Federal Government began the vaccination of Nigerians against the deadly disease on Friday when health workers at the National Hospital, Abuja received doses of the vaccine. On Saturday, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo were vaccinated against the deadly disease.
The Executive Director of the NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib, had on Thursday warned that his agency would not make the vaccine available to states which had not met the criteria set for its distribution.
