The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), says Cross River state made great strides in its COVID-19 vaccination in the last seven days with persistent daily increase rate.
The Executive Director, NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, made this known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Sunday in Abuja.
Shuaib noted that Cross River and Delta states recently joined the top 10 performing states on COVID vaccination across the country.
He added that Cross River state’s total clients vaccinated for first dose was now 228,733, its total vaccinated for second doses 99,272 and the total clients vaccinated for booster dose were now 100 as of Dec. 25, 2021.
The NPHCDA boss disclosed that there were also five states that were performing very well on the COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign in the country – Jigawa, Nassarawa, Ogun, Oyo and Kwara.
“Some 53 per cent of vaccinated persons are from the Southern part of the country while 47 per cent are from the Northern part of the country,” he explained.
He noted that Jigawa state recently took center stage by displacing Nasarawa state.
Shuaib stressed that Lagos state leads in vaccinating more eligible persons in the country by contributing 14 per cent to the country’s uptake.
He stated that more than nine million eligible persons have been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
“As of December 24th, 2021, in 36 States and the FCT, 9,543,816 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination received the first dose, while 4,317,123 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination were reached with second dose (fully vaccinated),” he disclosed.
Shuaib added that the proportion of eligible people vaccinated in the country for their first dose were 8.5 per cent, while the proportion of eligible people vaccinated for their second dose were 3.9 per cent as of Dec. 24, 2021.
He noted that there was the need for Nigerians to make themselves available for a booster, adding that a booster vaccine dose typically would help Nigerians improve their protection against the COVID-19 variants concerns, “after a person have completed one or two doses of vaccine, depending on the product,” according to the World Health Organisation.
“It gives longer-term protection against getting seriously ill from COVID-19 and is designed to help people maintain longer level of immunity, and is currently being admitted in several countries,” he noted.
The NPHCDA boss also insisted that the national booster campaign remains the main tool in the country’s arsenal for curbing the spread of Omicron.
He suggested that all the COVID-19 vaccines in the country offer “significant protection” against the Omicron variant, and that two doses should still ward off severe disease.
NAN reports that this comes as the EU medicines watchdog said that there were early indications the Omicron variant may cause milder disease than previous strains.
The suggestion from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) echoed similar findings from the World Health Organization (WHO), which said earlier this week there was some evidence that Omicron causes less severe disease than the dominant Delta strain.
“Cases appear to be mostly mild, however, we need to gather more evidence to determine whether the spectrum of disease severity caused by Omicron is different [to] that of all the variants that have been circulating so far,” said Marco Cavaleri, EMA’s head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy. (NAN)
