The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday said it is developing a framework under which grants and long-term facilities would be provided to researchers, science institutions and biotechnology firms to develop a local vaccine.
This is aimed at encouraging greater research and development of drugs and vaccines that would help prevent the spread of the coronavirus in Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, CBN governor, said at the commissioning of THISDAY Dome COVID-19 Testing, Tracing and Treatment Centre in Abuja.
“Needless to state that if we are to wait for foreign countries to develop their own vaccines, we will be the last in the queue to receive curative remedies for our teeming population,” Emefiele said speaking on the need to develop a home-grown solution to tackle the dreaded virus.
He challenged Nigerian scientists at home and in the diaspora to go back to their laboratories and develop a Nigerian vaccine.
The THISDAY Dome COVID-19 Testing, Tracing and Treatment Centre, donated by THISDAY Media and Technology Group, is capable of accommodating about 360 patients with potential to hold up to 500 patients with further needs and is equipped with a mobile laboratory. It was commissioned by Boss Mustapha, chairman, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
“Once validated by the health authorities, the CBN will step in and do the needful for the sake of over 200 million Nigerians now confronted by COVID-19,” Emefiele said.
“Our inability to accurately predict the extent to which the coronavirus could spread, and how long it would last, requires that we build sufficient capacity within our health system in order to contain the spread of the virus, state by state, city by city, and preserve the lives of vulnerable Nigerians. This requires that we all come together to support the ‘work of the Presidential Task Force in its determination to save lives and stem the pandemic,” he said.
Against the backdrop of alleged production of COVID-19 curative drugs by some Nigerian researchers and manufacturers, Boss Mustapha said during the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja on Tuesday that the Federal Government was not expecting vaccines for the cure of the virus until towards the end of 2021, stressing that manufacturers of the vaccines are still in the process of validating them.
He advised that as much as it is encouraging that Nigerians are trying to find cure for the pandemic, their alleged cure must be subjected to the process of safety validation before they would be certified safe.
“From the little literature I have read about COVID-19, we are not expecting any vaccines to be on the shelves until towards the end of 2021, that is for even industries that have perfected the processes of manufacturing of these vaccines,” Mustapha said.
“So, there are processes. My encouragement to our people, our researchers and those that are in the processes of manufacturing drugs and cure is that they should be patient and they should run it through a process. That is the only way we can have it validated so that at the end of the day, if their drugs are certified okay, they will receive appropriate validation,” he said.
He pointed out that most of the reported cases of the prescribed cure for the virus are on the social media, adding that there is nothing definitive about that.
On the reported case of drugs from Madagascar coming into Nigeria, Sani Aliyu, national coordinator of the task force, said the Madagascar drugs are to be subjected to proper safety and efficacy tests.
“I want to state again that any medication coming into the country, whether it is a herbal cure, concoction or proper cure, has to be subjected to a normal regulatory process. The Madagascar cure would be subjected to the normal process we expect within the legal frameworks and guidelines that we have and more importantly, not only to establish the drug efficacy but the drug’s safety,” he said.
Speaking further at the commissioning of the THISDAY Dome COVID-19 Testing, Tracing and Treatment Centre, Emefiele said the country is currently faced with public health and economic crises of unprecedented proportions, driven primarily by the 55 percent drop in crude oil prices between January and May 2020.
Global growth is expected to contract to 3 percent in 2020, down from a positive growth rate of 2.9 percent in 2019 which is effectively a 6 percent contraction.
The unparalleled shock, he said, requires that the federal and state governments along with the organised private sector work together to address these challenges in order to preserve lives and restore economic activity and reset the economy of the country.
In a bid to cushion the effects of COVID-19 on the Nigerian economy, the CBN had recently implemented several initiatives, including the N50bn intervention facility for small and medium scale enterprises affected by COVID-19, in addition to the N1 trillion facility for firms operating in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors.
He disclosed that the apex bank is also working with financial institutions to enable the continuous flow of credit to viable businesses, while putting in place provisions such as moratoriums and restructuring of existing loans under CBN intervention funds that have been made available to businesses.
The measures are aimed at cushioning the effects of the slowdown in economic activity on businesses, while putting them in better stead to help resuscitate economic activity in the country.
He CBN governor noted that Nigeria’s ability to restore the growth of the economy is dependent on how the country addresses the public health crisis brought on by COVID-19.
“It is in realisation of this fact that the CBN recently launched a N100bn healthcare intervention fund.
Practitioners in the pharmaceutical and health care sectors will be able to access finance at single-digit rate through this fund. Our objective is to improve the capacity of our health system to address emerging public health challenges,” he said.
Emefiele commended the Nigerian private sector, who have come together under the Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) to support the government, by raising funds to procure needed isolation centres, medical equipment, etc.
“So far, the CACOVlD-19 has raised up to N27 billion to fund these initiatives. These donations are being used to build well-equipped isolation centres across the 36 states of the federation,” Emefiele said.
He said the THISDAY Dome Testing, Tracing and Treatment Centre launched on Tuesday “represents a part of the support being provided by the CACOVID alliance”.
“These measures will result in the addition of close to 4,000 hospital beds across the country and will serve as a significant boost towards our efforts at containing the spread of COVlD-19. So, CACOVID has equipped and handed over isolation centres in Rivers, Enugu, Kwara, Ondo, and Borno States,” he said.
