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The Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 has postponed the rollout of the second batch of the vaccination.
The vaccination was earlier scheduled to commence on Tuesday, August 10 at the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi, Abuja, following the receipt of a consignment of Moderna vaccine doses donated by the American government to intensify the battle against the virus.
This was contained in a statement by the spokesman to PSC on COVID-19 Willie Bassey, issued on Sunday in Abuja.
U.S. President Joe Biden had in May pledged to share 80 million vaccines with countries around the world to protect the most vulnerable. Of this number, Africa is expected to receive 25 million.
The first shipments to Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Ethiopia and now Nigeria have been delivered.
Bassey explained that the exercise was postponed due to some unforeseen circumstances.
The statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria partly reads: “This is to announce the postponement of the national flag-off of phase 11 vaccination programme earlier scheduled for Tuesday this week due to unforeseen circumstances.
“A new date will be communicated,” it said.
Following the increasing COVID-19 cases linked to the highly transmissible Delta variants, the government confirmed the third wave of the pandemic in the country.
Data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) showed that as of August 7, the country has recorded 177,615 coronavirus cases and 2,185 fatalities.
Although the country commenced inoculation of its citizens against COVID-19 in early March, only 3,938,945 eligible persons across 36 states and FCT have so far been vaccinated.
Out of the figure, 2,534,205 people have been vaccinated for the first dose and 1,404,205 have received their second dose of the vaccine.
