The CEO of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Faisal Shuaib has stated that the first batch of the 4 million AstraZeneca vaccines is set to arrive Nigeria.
This was disclosed in a social media statement by the FG on Monday evening.
“As of today, Purchase Orders have been raised by UNICEF Supply Division for the Astrazeneca vaccine. Under normal circumstances, with routine immunization vaccines, it takes 2 weeks from when the Purchase Order is raised to when we receive the vaccine in Nigeria,” Dr. Shuaib said.
READ: Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines expected to generate $15 billion in 2021
He added that the process order would be fastened to ensure availability in a week.
“However, because this is an emergency situation, we have been informed by UNICEF that this process will be fast-tracked to potentially ensure the vaccines arrive Nigeria within 1 week. As soon as we receive confirmation on date of arrival, we’ll inform Nigerians.
“We have also been informed that 4 million out of the 16million doses of AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in the first batch of supplies to the country,” he added.
READ: Why Nigeria may not access COVAX Pfizer vaccines in February
What you should know
Recall Nairametrics reported earlier this month that the NPHCDA said Nigeria is no longer expecting the 100,000 doses of the Pfizer/BIONtech vaccine through the COVAX facility but has been allocated about 16 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
- Fayemi had earlier revealed that about 80 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines will soon be made available in the country, to immunize 40% of the Nigerian population this year.
- The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, had earlier announced that the first batch of 15 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines, which is from AstraZeneca under the COVAX programme, is expected to be available from February.
- This is coming after the African Union (AU)’s African Vaccines had allocated 42 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Nigeria.
- Also, the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, said the Nigerian government expected over 41 million vaccines from the African Union before the end of April, as it also expected to source vaccines from India and Russia.
- The Federal Government had earlier announced that Nigeria was about to receive 1.4 million doses of vaccines donated by MTN.
- The UK Government has revealed that the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) had announced that Nigeria would be one of the first countries to receive 16 million free doses of Covid-19 vaccines through the COVAX Global Vaccines Facility.
- BUA Group revealed that it had purchased a million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines for Nigeria, with delivery to be made soon.
