Nigeria expecting 58m doses of COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX and AVATT – Health minister

The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, said on Monday the Federal Government was expecting 58million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX and African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT).

Ehanire, who disclosed this during the weekly media briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja, said Nigeria would receive 16 million vaccine doses from COVAX and 42 million doses from AVATT.

He added that the federal government was also in negotiation with India and Russia over the COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Barhat Institute and Gamaleya, a pharmaceutical company in the Eastern European nation.

The minister said:

“With regard to vaccines, Nigeria has kept abreast of global development and supports the World Health Organisation (WHO) for fair and equitable distribution of vaccines, since COVID-19 is a threat to mankind.

READ ALSO: Nigeria to partner WHO on manufacturing, supply of COVID-19 vaccines – Buhari

“We subscribed to two multilateral vaccine access platforms; the first being the COVAX facility that will supply members, including Nigeria, vaccines free of charge to cover 20 percent of our population.

“There has since been a change that now offers Nigeria 16 million vaccine doses in the first half of the year. The other multilateral platform is the African Union AVATT platform, the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, chaired by the President of South Africa, Mr. Cyril Ramaphosa.

“AVATT has acquired 300 million doses of three types of vaccines which have been offered to African countries, based on population, such that no country is left behind.

“Nigeria subscribes to this whole-of-Africa approach that strives to ensure that we are safe and our neighbours are safe. We shall be offered over 42 million doses by AVATT. If all the projected vaccines are supplied, we estimate we should have covered over 45 percent of the population.”

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