Britain vaccinates 3.5m citizens as Nigeria wait on aids

Nigeria remains heavily reliant on handouts from the global COVAX scheme of the World Health Organisation.

Ahmed Oluwasanjo • January 16, 2021

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and NIgerian President Muhammadu Buhari

The United Kingdom on Saturday announced that over 3.5million of its 66million population have been inoculated against coronavirus.

Over 3.3million cases and 88,000 coronavirus deaths have been recorded in the U.K. compelling a second lockdown to curtail the spread of a mutated strain of the deadly virus.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday said over 300,000 vaccinations were done in a day.

“We’ve given over 3.5 million vaccine doses to protect against COVID-19, with over 324,000 doses yesterday alone”, Mr. Johnson said in a tweet. “Thank you to everyone who is helping in this fantastic national effort.”

On the contrary, Nigeria, a country with over 200million people, has no immediate clarity on its vaccination plans. Aside announcing an expected delivery of 100,000 free doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by January ending, officials have not been able to give a definite timeline or quantity of vaccine the company would like ordering to inoculate its vast population.

Nigeria remains heavily reliant on handouts from the global COVAX scheme of the World Health Organisation, which provides free vaccines to indigent countries, while other countries make efforts to get their citizens vaccinated.

Faisal Shuaib, Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency said 100,000 doses of vaccines expected will be administered first on the political class, frontline health workers and some vulnerable persons.

He added that “in order to achieve eradication of COVID-19 in Nigeria, we need to cover 70 percent of the total population with COVID-19 vaccines. Forty per cent will be vaccinated in 2021, while 30 percent will be covered in 2022″.

Interestingly, state health minister Olorunimbe Mamora told Bloomberg in a recent interview: “We haven’t made any purchases at this point in time.”

Mr. Mamora told the American media outlet that a robust approach towards acquiring vaccines will be set in motion late January.

However, Finance minister Zainab Ahmed on Tuesday disclosed that the national budget for the 2021 fiscal year made no tangible provision for purchase of COVID-19 vaccines.

Over 100,000 cases and over 1,000 coronavirus deaths have been recorded in Nigeria.

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