16th May, 2021
By Abujah Racheal
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) said a total of 1,794,552 Nigerians have so far been inoculated with the first dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
The NPHCDA disclosed this on its official Twitter handle late Saturday.
Lagos leads the vaccination drive with 279,372 jabs.
The FCT followed with 118,895 jab and Kano 92,583.
The immunisation agency said that three states reached 100 percent of their target population.
They are Kwara with 104 per cent; Ekiti with 100 per cent and Cross River with 100 per cent.
According to the agency, this brings the proportion of Nigerians vaccinated to 89.2 per cent.
NPHCDA urged Nigerians, who had received their first dose of the vaccine, to ensure they check their vaccination cards to know when they were due for their second jab.
It stated that this would ensure that every Nigerian who receives a vaccine from the present supply, receives their second dose before the recommended time span between doses passes, “which is between six and 12 weeks’’.
More than two million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine have been reserved for the second dose in the first phase of vaccination, it said.
Nigeria received about four million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine out of the 16 million doses expecting from COVAX.
COVAX is the vaccine-sharing initiative that provides free and discounted doses for lower-income countries.
NPHCDA said that Nigeria is expecting about 40 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from the African Union (AU).
The Nigerian government had said it plans to vaccinate 109 million people against the COVID-19 virus over a period of two years