Federal government has said that COVID-19 vaccinations will resume in the country on August 16. The Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib who disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday, said the doses of the Moderna vaccine, which arrived from the United States last week, were being prepared for rollout. Shuaib who spoke at a media briefing, said labels with barcodes were being prepared to enable proper tracking and tracing of the vaccine doses at health facilities where they will be administered.
The explanation came amidst reports that the delay in the rollout of the vaccine several days after taking delivery of the consignment was due to incorrect documentation. “As you are already aware, NAFDAC took samples of the vaccines to test for their integrity, their consistency with what the global standard is, what the Nigerian standard is and to ensure that it is in line with the product information that has been provided by the US Government and Moderna. NAFDAC has come back to state that they have approve the Moderna vaccine for use.
“The media reports that seem to suggest that we are delaying the rollout of the vaccines due to documentations of the vaccine is not correct. On the contrary the reason why we had to extend/postpone the launch date of the vaccine is because we want to institute once again in conjunction with NAFDAC the track and trace all the way to health facility where the vaccines would be administered. “This means that we are locally creating labels for the vaccines barcodes that will ensure that this tracking and tracing continues just like we did in the 1st phase.
“Consequently, we want to call on all Nigerians to remain assured that the vaccines that we have are safe and will be deployed next week as earlier communicated. The flag off and roll out of the 2nd phase of the COVID-19 vaccination programme will be done on August 16th, 2021,” he said.
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