Chidi Samuel/ Nigeria will begin administering the second batch of COVID-19 vaccines from August 10, the presidential steering committee (PSC) on COVID-19 has said.
Willie Bassey, the director of press, PSC on COVID-19, who made the disclosure in a statement in Abuja, on Saturday said the commencement of the second batch vaccination is pertinent as the country battles the third wave of the pandemic.
“The PSC has received over four million doses of Moderna vaccine donated by the U.S. Government to Nigeria.
“In view of the above, the inoculation is scheduled from Tuesday, Aug. 10, at the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, off Airport road, Abuja,” he said.
The federal government on August 1 received 4.08m doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from the United States.
The vaccine doses were received by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) on behalf of the federal government and stored at the country’s National Strategic Cold Store near Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.
The Moderna vaccine had been listed for emergency use by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and approved by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
It is the second batch of vaccines received by Nigeria after the country had run out of the initial four million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine received from the COVAX facility.
-COVID-19 Third Wave: Nigeria’s active cases surpass 9,000
Meanwhile, The Nigeria Centre For Disease Control (NCDC) says the number of active COVID-19 cases in Nigeria increased to 9,066 with 565 additional cases confirmed on Friday.
The NCDC made this known on its verified website on Saturday morning.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the country’s new active case indicates an increase from 9,033 cases, registered a day earlier.
The NCDC stated that 76 people had recovered and were discharged from various isolation centres in the country on Friday.
The Public health agency said that to date, 165,409 recoveries had been recorded nationwide in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
According to it, Friday’s statistics is the total of reported cases across 16 states of the federation and the FCT.
According to the latest NCDC data, Lagos has the highest number of infections with 348 cases. Rivers 70, while Akwa Ibom comes next with 45 infections.
Others were Oyo (36), FCT (24 ), Ekiti (15), Kwara (7), Ogun (7), Gombe (3), Anambra and Kaduna reported 2 cases each, while Bayelsa, Cross River, Edo, Plateau, Kano and Sokoto registered one case respectively.
The NCDC added that Nasarawa, Ondo, and Osun reported zero cases as of Friday.
The agency stated the country had confirmed 177,142 cases, noting that 2,178 people had died in 36 states and the FCT.
It added that a multi-sectoral national emergency operations centre (EOC), activated at Level 2, continued to coordinate the national response activities.
It said that the country had also tested more than 2.5 million samples for the virus out of the country’s roughly 200 million population.
The NCDC said that the country’s COVID-19 average test positivity rate was 6 per cent.
With NAN report
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