Following the controversy that greeted Nigeria’s exclusion from the first recipients of free coronavirus vaccines facilitated by the World Health Organisation for select African nations, a public health agency, NPHCDA, has sought to make clarification on the raging issue.

WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, had disclosed at a press briefing on Thursday that only South Africa, Cape Verde, Rwanda, and Tunisia were shortlisted to take delivery of the first roll-out of 320,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, out of 13 countries that applied from the continent.

Ms. Moeti expressed concern about the readiness of African nations to receive the coveted inoculation, which requires storage at minus 70 degrees Celsius.

“We can’t afford to waste a single dose,” the WHO official had said, justifying reports that Nigeria and eight other African countries were overlooked by the global agency due to power deficiency and inadequate storage facilities required to keep the vaccines frozen before being administered.

Wading into the outrage ignited by Nigeria’s exclusion from the maiden list of beneficiaries of the WHO handouts, the executive director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, said at a press conference Saturday that the country which was initially scheduled to receive 100,000 doses of the Pfizer jab was taken off the list due to new considerations by the global agency. 

“There were a number of factors that were considered in allocating the small quantity of about 320,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine to Covax countries in Africa,” Mr. Faisal said, noting that the factors included mortality rate from the pandemic, infection toll, population amongst others.

“It is clear that countries such as South Africa which received the Pfizer allocation has the new strain of the Covid-19 virus, the highest mortality rate and is struggling to contain Covid-19 transmission,” 

“Furthermore, being that smaller countries such as Cape Verde and Rwanda have smaller populations, the Pfizer vaccine would not have served the best public health interest if we had spread it fairly across the African continent,” he stated.

The NPHCDA chief explained that a hundred thousand doses of the Pfizer inoculation to Nigeria would have been “a drop in the ocean.”

The Nigerian government ministers, associates and surrogates had parroted an anticipated delivery of a shipment of 100,000 Pfizer jabs last month, citing assurances from WHO.

Nigerians are querying why the global agency did not take into consideration the country’s population before including it in its beneficiary list for the limited Pfizer vaccine.

Mr. Faisal, however, disclosed that Nigeria would receive 16 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 jab from WHO, which is due to arrive the country before the end of February.

“The delivery of the AstraZeneca vaccine is within the same timeline as the 100 doses of Pfizer vaccines we would have received,” he said, noting that “16 million doses (which replaces the 100,000 Pfizer jab) would invariably help us reach more of our population.”

Nigeria’s capacity to store the large volume of the expected vaccines within approved temperature levels has, nonetheless, remained an issue of debate.