The Federal Government has developed a comprehensive National Covid-19 vaccine deployment and vaccination plan and an operational manual to roll out the vaccines when they become available in the country.
Executive Secretary, National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib disclosed this at the briefing of the Presidential Taskforce of Covid-19 on Monday.
Shuaib said the Federal Government is determined to stop the spread of the virus in Nigeria by accessing the World Health Organization (WHO) approved vaccines which will be administered free of charge at government designated and some private health facilities.
He encourage all Nigerians to get vaccinated when the vaccines become accessible as the benefits of the vaccines far outweigh the potential side effects.
“The chances of spreading the disease is significantly reduced once community men are vaccinated and protected, owning to the fact that the vaccine triggers an immune response that will protect your body against the viruses if encountered.
“There is currently seems to be hesitency and this is largely caused by misinforms, leading to mistrust, doubt, suspicions and conspiracies theories. We urged the public to disregard such misrepresentation from unverified sources and listen to the medical experts for confirmed information.
“It’s important to note that vaccines, including Covid-19 vaccines are manufactured under strict compliances with WHO guidelines. Therefore, Covid-19 vaccines do not contain any harmful substance or microchips and does not alter human genetic information.
“Furthermore, any vaccine coming to Nigeria will be tested by NAFDAC and certified safe human use before it is administered. We wouldn’t like to assure all Nigerians that this verification exercise will also be applicable to the Covid-19 vaccine and NAFDAC will continue to monitor the efficacy of the vaccine even after its administration to ensure proper documents of any side effect.
“I want to reiterate that the first set of vaccines expected in the country is the Pfizer vaccines and equipment that are required to store them, that’s the ultra cold chain equipment for the storage of the vaccines are available at the National Strategic Cold Store of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency.
“The requirement for the 100,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine that would be coming by the end of January is 500 liters. So we have more than enough capacity for the 100, 000 doses. I make particular reference to those reports that claim we do not have any ultra cold equity”, he explained.
