Governors of the 36 States of the Federation on the platform of Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) have resolved to take the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, publicly next week Tuesday, March 9.
This was one of the decisions taken at their emergency meeting to discuss the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines in the country.
In the meeting were the the chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, Director-General , Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu and Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib as well as medical experts who play advisory roles for the NGF on the pandemic.
The chairman of NGF and Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, who read out the communique, said the governors assured on the security of vaccines but insisted on ensuring the efficacy of the vaccines, pledging advocacy so that all of their peoples would be covered.
State governors commit to work with the FG to ensure required cold Chain set up, trained personnel and security of the vaccine roll out are in place.
The Governors encouraged citizens to use the e-registeration portal on the NPHCDA website – nphcsaict.com.ng/publicreg to register.
Mustapha told the governors that 3,924,000 million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines (part of the 16 million does of the AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facility arrangement) arrived on Tuesday.
He assured that the vaccine is researched to be safe for persons 18 years and above.
He said NAFDEC was conducting test to confirm vaccine is safe for roll out.
He explained that government leadership and frontline health workers to receive vaccines first starting March 6th 2020 with the President and the Vice President.
