Nigeria is Working to Develop COVID-19 Vaccine- Buhari
As the country continues to battle the growing cases of the COVID-19 virus, President Muhammadu Buhari said in a televised interview on Thursday that Nigeria is working to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Health experts, however, said Nigeria needs to triple its vaccination drive from just over 100,000 doses a day to meet its target of inoculating more than half its population by the end of next year.
Nigeria has been exploring options to acquire or purchase vaccines through the COVAX facility to enable it to inoculate at least 70% of its population.
It received vaccine donations some of which had a shelf life that left only weeks to administer the shots. Nigeria destroyed more than one million expired vaccines last month.
“We are working very hard with the ministry of health to develop vaccines,” Buhari said on state television. “We shouldn’t make noise about it until we succeed.”
Nigeria, which has not tested widely for COVID-19, has recorded 245,404 COVID-19 cases and 3,058 deaths since the pandemic started.
In 2017, Nigeria’s cabinet approved a plan to produce basic vaccines with pharmaceutical firm May & Baker Nigeria via a joint venture. It’s not clear whether the project took off.
Buhari said his administration is encouraging Nigerians to get inoculated. So far, fewer than 4% of adults in Africa’s most populous nation of over 200 million have been fully vaccinated.
