Guinea Pigs

The Kogi State Government has expressed readiness to start administering the COVID-19 vaccine to residents. Earlier, Governor Yahaya Bello insisted that he would not allow his people to be used as “guinea pigs by vaccine manufacturers”. But the State Commissioner for Health, Saka Haruna, told journalists on Monday in a telephone interview that Kogi will receive doses of the vaccine on Tuesday ahead of the rollout. He also said the residents will be given “unhindered access to receive the vaccine”. Kogi is the only state yet to start administering the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to residents three weeks after Nigeria began its rollout. The National Primary Health Care Development Agency had attributed the delay to two factors – the state’s “concerns around the contradictory information about...