NAFDAC approves AstraZeneca COVID vaccine for Nigeria

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control on Thursday endorsed the use of AstraZeneca COVID vaccine for use in Nigeria.

Director-General, NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, announced the approval of the vaccine at a news conference in Abuja, saying that the body had received doses of the vaccine a week ago.

She said the agency’s safety committee immediately went to work on receiving the vaccine to verify its safety for use by Nigerians and came up with positive results.

Adeyeye stated that the vaccine could be stored between two and eight degree centigrade.

The NAFDAC boss also disclosed that three vaccines were being evaluated for their effective use in Nigeria.

According to her, Astrazeneca is more potent among those being evaluated as it is effective against the British variant COVID-19 virus.

About 13 of the British variant of the virus have been reported in Nigeria in recent times.

Adeyeye also said that over 30 herbal medicines were undergoing evaluation in Nigeria to ascertain their efficacy for use in curing COVID-19.

The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, codenamed AZD1222, is a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca given by intramuscular injection.

The vaccine was on December 30, 2020 approved for use in the UK’s vaccination programme, and the first vaccination outside of a trial was administered on January 4, 2021.

The WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) has issued interim recommendations for use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.