PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo will on Saturday receive the COVID-19 vaccine publicly. The decision to have the President and Vice President receive the COVID-19 vaccination in the open was to correct the misgivings in some quarters over the efficacy of the vaccine.

The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, disclosed this at the second edition of the State House weekly briefing.

The second edition was focused on Nigeria’s Response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the last one year, and especially the National Vaccination Response. Shuaib said that the President and the Vice President will receive the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday after some frontline health workers are vaccinated on Friday.

He also said that Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 (PTF) and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Boss Mustapha will also receive his first dose of the vaccine on the same day.

Also speaking, the Director-General, of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, Dr Chikwe Iheakwazu, said that as much as vaccines provide some very important light, the response of – testing, surveillance, protecting health workers, investing in national health security, driving risk communications, etc. has to continue. Director General of National Agency for Food Drugs and Administration Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, also warned that falsified COVID-19 vaccines are already in the global market.

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She said: “That’s why NAFDAC is focusing on track-and-trace, to ensure no infiltration of substandard vaccines in supply chain. Traceability is very important; we can trace the vaccines from airport to the patient.”

The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, warned thar as a country, Nigeria has been lucky so far but, “we must not stretch our luck. We must continue with our non-pharmaceutical measures.

“We must look at vaccine as a game changer, but make no mistake that it’s a replacement for everything else. It is an additional strategy. Vaccines are an addition to the existing Response, not a Replacement.