By KEMI KASUMU
“Of the 88 million AstraZeneca doses allocated to African countries for the first phase, Nigeria has received by far the largest allocation, with 16 million doses.”
Nigeria is not disqualified from accessing COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.
Some Nigerians had earlier in Saturday attention of the public to what they described as mischievous twist and misrepresentation of truth about WHO’s statement to mean disqualification of the country.
PUNCH Newspaper in Nigeria published disqualification of Nigeria by WHO and was debunked.
Contrary to the reports conspicuously published by PUNCH and Sahara Reporters, the international health agency said there was nothing of such.
Making itself clear position on Saturday at an emergency press briefing in Abuja, called by the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Country Representative in Nigeria, Walter Molunbo, said the agency had not disqualified any country from accessing vaccines from the facility.
With this denial, the burden of proof now lies on the media that published the fake news to tell the world where they got their information from. This is necessary, The DEFENDER reports, as many are worried why notable ethnic, religious elements and members of the “supposedly” noble profession of the press could descend low to flying fake news daily to run down their own country and still vehemently claim its their rights to do so.
The WHO said, against the untrue report, it was assisting Nigeria and other African countries to start accessing the Astrazeneca vaccine as from February, as soon as it received clearance for emergency use.
Nigeria has been granted the largest allocation of 16 million doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine from the COVAX facility, WHO confirmed.
The agency’s CR said: “WHO has not disqualified any country in Africa from accessing COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility, but rather is supporting all countries to access vaccines as quickly as possible.
“Currently, 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.
“Of the 88 million AstraZeneca doses allocated to African countries for the first phase, Nigeria has received by far the largest allocation, with 16 million doses.
“In addition to the Astra Zeneca doses, there is an initial limited volume of Pfizer vaccine available through COVAX.
“Demand for the initial allocation of 1.2 million Pfizer doses was exceptionally high. COVAX received interest from 72 countries around the world, of which 51 countries were considered by the review committee as “ready” (Nigeria was among these countries) and 18 countries in total were finally chosen to receive initial Pfizer doses.
“On the Africa continent, as of the 18 January deadline, 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 Nigeria.
“Unfortunately, it was not feasible to provide each of these 51 countries with Pfizer doses, due to a number of factors including the limited capacity for Pfizer to handle many countries at once. Therefore, spreading the limited doses across all the 51 countries deemed ‘ready’. could have not achieve the intended public health benefit.
“After epidemiological data was taken into account, the decision was taken to proportionally balance the number of self financing and AMC Participants, as well as Participants across all 6 WHO regions.”
