We Didn’t Disqualify Nigeria From Accessing COVID-19 Vaccines – WHO

World Health Organisation (WHO) has denied media report that Nigeria and some other African countries have been disqualified from COVID-19 Vaccines.

The WHO’s representative in Nigeria, Dr. W. Kazadi Mulombo, in a series of tweets on Saturday stated that the global health agency was supporting all countries to access vaccines as quickly as possible.

He tweeted, “The World Health Organisation has not disqualified any country in Africa from accessing #COVID19 vaccines through the COVAX facility, but rather, is supporting all countries to access vaccines as quickly as possible.”

“All countries on the continent are expected to start accessing the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccines by the end of February. The vaccine is under review by WHO for Emergency Use Listing and the outcome is expected soon.”

He noted that Nigeria has been allocated 16 million doses of the 88 million AstraZeneca vaccine allocated to Africa for the first phase, which is the largest allocation for a single country.

“In addition to the AstraZeneca doses, there is an initial limited volume of Pfizer vaccine available through COVAX.”

“On the African continent, as if the 18th January, COVAX received 13 submissions and a multi-agency committee evaluated the proposals of which 9 were recommended as ready to deploy the Pfizer vaccine including, “Mulombo added.

Nigeria is yet to receive any vaccines though the federal government had promised that it would obtain 100,000 doses by the end of January 2021.

However, the Lai Mohammed, the information minister, had last week disclosed that the 100,000 doses, which he said would now come in February, was delayed because of “politics and logistics due to no fault of Nigeria.”