The Executive Director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib has expressed government’s readiness to receive the first batch of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine by February 2021.
He made this known in Abuja during the agency’s weekly press briefing on COVID-19.
According to him, the expected date of arrival of the first 100,000 doses of the mRNA vaccine will now be in February and not in January, as earlier communicated.”
“let me reiterate the fact that at the National Strategic Cold Store (NSCS), we have three (3) Ultra-Cold Chain (UCC) freezers, which have the capacity to store over 400,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccines at a temperature of -60 to -80 degrees centigrade. We also have Walk in freezer rooms that can store vaccines at -25 to -15 degree centigrade.
“The mRNA vaccines can be stored at +2 to +8 degree centigrade at the health facility level for 5 days. And through our routine immunization system, we have supported the states in the past with Solar Direct Drive (SDD) cold chain equipment. By the end of 2021, all the political wards in Nigeria will have one functional cold chain equipment per ward to ensure potency of the vaccine, even if there is no electricity supply. We have enough storage capacity at national, zonal, state, LGA, ward and health facility levels. Gentlemen of the Press, this is enough reason for you to be assured of our preparedness to store the vaccine.
“It is important gentlemen, to underscore the fact that the vaccines we are expecting are the same mRNA vaccines being used in the USA, UK, Israel, France, Germany and most of European countries. The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccines are universally the same and the mRNA vaccine was the first to receive Emergency Use Authorization by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is reported to have 95% efficacy. Moreover, it is made accessible globally through the COVAX facility. It is for the reason of availability, coupled with its 95% efficacy rate that it is the first batch of vaccines that Nigeria will access through the COVAX facility.
“As I have said over and over again, we have a moral responsibility to ensure that we use only vaccines approved by WHO, tested and certified by NAFDAC in Nigeria. There is therefore no vaccine that is specifically produced for Nigeria or Africa. So the talk of a vaccine for Africa only is again one of the misinformation out there.
He further added that government through the PTF is exploring other means to make additional COVID-19 vaccines available for at least 70% of our population. “One of such ways is through the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT); an intervention of the African Union Commission, which is aimed at accelerating the financing and procurement of safe and efficacious COVID-19 vaccines.
” Nigeria will be accessing millions of doses of the recommended COVID-19 vaccines through this channel by April 2021. We are pleased to confirm that The African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) has provisionally secured 270 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for the critical period from April – December 2021, which will be distributed through the Africa Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP).
“It is pertinent to state that the priority given to healthcare workers in the first 2 phases of our COVID-19 introduction plan was borne out of the need to optimally protect our health workforce. The health workers are at the most risk of exposure, making them highly susceptible to COVID-19 infection, which they could unknowingly spread to their patients.
