COVID-19 Vaccination: 640,454 persons receive Moderna first shot- NPHCDA

The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), has announced that 640,454 Nigerians have received their first shot of the Moderna vaccine so far in 36 States and the FCT.

READ ALSO: Covid-19: NPHCDA fully vaccinates 2.9m Nigerians 

The NPHCDA disclosed this on its Facebook page on Thursday.

The agency also noted that 56,582 eligible Nigerians vaccinated with the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine have received their second dose.

According to the NPHCDA COVID-19 vaccination update as of September 2, 2021, 32 per cent of the population has been vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine while 8.1 per cent of the population has been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The update, however, showed that Kogi state is yet to begin the second phase vaccination against COVID-19 with the Moderna vaccine.

The update also showed that Bauchi, Borno, Kogi, Yobe and Zamfara states did not inoculate their citizens as the states recorded zero in the total clients vaccinated for the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Earlier, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, said the Federal Government would not make COVID-19 vaccination compulsory until there was enough to go round.

This is as he added that vaccination would soon be made compulsory for civil servants.

Mustapha stated this during a meeting with the state’s commissioners for health in Abuja.

He said, “The vaccine mandate will obviously come. Before now, simple yellow fever vaccine, you couldn’t travel without the card until Nigeria exited from the list of endangering countries.

“The world is gravitating towards that direction. By the time the western world vaccinates its people, you won’t be able to get to any of the western countries without the vaccine certificate. It is happening.

“In the EU dispensation now, they have created some waivers for people that have been vaccinated. It is better we begin to prepare our people at home.

“One of the reasons we want to do that with the federal civil servants is because they will be travelling to perform roles on behalf of the Federal Government.

“The United Nations General Assembly will be starting soon. We will need our people to go there. Assuming the American Government says you can’t come into the US unless you are vaccinated and we have not vaccinated our people; how will they go to prepare the ground for the meeting that will be attended by the President and other top government officials?

“It is a sequential thing. We are taking one step at a time. We realised that we don’t have sufficient vaccines; we will not be able to impose such a mandate on an automatic basis until we make sure that the vaccine is available and deployed in appropriate places and people have opportunities to get the vaccines. Then we will now impose the mandatory nature of whether you must have the vaccine or not before you can access government facilities.”

So far, Nigeria has confirmed 193,644 cases of COVID-19 and 179,249 patients have recovered from the infection and have been discharged.

The death toll from the virus has risen to 2,488, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

MTO/Punch