The National Primary Healthcare Development Agency,(NPHCDA), said it has vaccinated 5,770,899 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination reached with the first dose, while fully vaccinated no fewer than 3,146,885 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination.
The Director of Planning Research and Statistics, NPHCDA, Dr Abdullahi Bulama Garba, disclosed this in Abuja, at the Ministerial Press Briefing, update on COVID-19 Response and Development in the Health Sector.
Garuba stated that this was on November 7, 2021, in the 36 States including the FCT as he disclosed that there were over eight million doses of vaccines in the country at the moment, but the country was still expecting more doses.
He emphasized that to achieve herd immunity against the infection, Nigeria had set an ambitious goal of vaccinating 40 per cent of its over 200 million population before the end of 2021, and 70 per cent by the end of 2022.
“To achieve this, the vaccine roll-out was scheduled to be in four phases, starting with health workers, frontline workers, COVID-19 rapid response team amongst others.
“The second phase has commenced and it’s capturing older adults aged 50 years and above and those with comorbidities aged between 18 and 49 years of age,” he explained.
Also speaking, the Director of Disease Surveillance Department, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control(NCDC), Mrs Elsie Ilori, while, given an update on Nigeria’s COVID-19 situation, stressed that while progress had been made in response to the ongoing pandemic with the fact-paced development of diagnostic, therapeutic, and vaccines globally, variants of concern with increased transmissibility pose a threat.
According to Ilori: “the pandemic continues to play out differently across countries worldwide. Notably, Africa had seen fewer severe cases and deaths but despite limitations of testing has experienced similar transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in its population. (Tribune)