The Federal Government intends to administer the awaited 50,000 COVI9-19 vaccines to frontline health workers, the elderly, persons with comorbidity and targeted police and immigration officers.
The Director of Disease Control and Immunization at the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Bassey Okposen, said in Abuja on Friday that the 100,000 vaccine doses expected from Pfizer by the end of this month or early February, would be administered to the above priority groups in two doses.
The second dose will be administered three weeks after the first.
His words: “When the vaccines arrive according to the plan that we have, there is going to be prioritization of persons to be given the vaccinations in order to optimise the available resources. This will be based on global guidelines and best practices.
“Based on World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) guidelines, health workers will be given first priority once the expected 100,000 of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines are received in the country in the first quarter of 2021.
“Other frontline workers like immigration at the airport, personnel at testing centres, police officers who are on essential duties, etc., would also be prioritised for vaccination because of the exposure.
“Then we’ll have the next group which are the elderly that are 50 years and above because most of the deaths that we see are among the elderly,” he added.
He said that apart from the COVAX platform, Nigeria also has other alternative sources of Covid-19 vaccines.
