Nigeria to get COVID-19 vaccines in Feb – NGF

Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) has hinted that vaccines against the ravaging coronavirus may not come earlier than the endo February 2021/

The governors, at a virtual meeting, said the country was working with the World Bank to ensure the supply of existing vaccines to the country.

The NGF, in a communique on Thursday, said its Chairman, Kayode Fayemi, briefed members on a meeting with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chair of the Board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GOVI) on the roll-out of the vaccines.

Fayemi was said to have told the meeting there was an arrangement for the World Health Organisation (WHO) “to facilitate pooled procurement and the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across developing countries. Nigeria is among 12 countries in Africa that have indicated readiness of the 92 qualified countries for the facility and will by end of February 2021 receive its first shipment of vaccines.”

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) annouved that the nation recorded 1,386 new cases in its update for January 20, 2021, increasing the country’s current total count of confirmed infections to 114,691.

With the figure, the country has confirmed 10,692 new infections within the past one week.

The new cases were confirmed across 21 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on Wednesday, with Lagos (476), Rivers (163) and the FCT (116) topping the list.

The number of new deaths also maintained a high count with 14 new fatalities reported on Wednesday — within the past week, 94 deaths have been recorded across the country.

A total of 1,478 persons have now been confirmed to have died of COVID complications.

The daily recovery count, however, stayed above 1,000 for the second consecutive day with 1,136 patients discharged on Wednesday.

As such, within the past seven days, 9,781 recoveries have been recorded, increasing the total count to 92,336.

There are currently 20,877 active cases across Nigeria, out of which Lagos accounts for 8,498 patients, followed by FCT with 4,032, and Nasarawa with 998.