National Primary Health Care Development Agency
Nigeria adds South Africa to its coronavirus ‘red list’ for arriving travellers
Nigeria is adding South Africa to its “red list” of countries for which there are stringent restrictions for arriving passengers, officials said during a briefing on Monday. Nigeria is introducing the restrictions due to the spread of the Delta variant in South Africa, Chikwe Ihekweazu, the head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, said. The country joins India, Brazil and Turkey on the list. “In Nigeria, we haven’t found the Delta variant yet,” Ihekweazu said during the briefing. Non-Nigerian passport holders and non-residents who visited the countries on the list within 14 days are barred entry from Nigeria, while passport holders and residents must undergo a seven-day quarantine in a government-approved facility at cost to the passenger. They are also required to take Covid-19 tes...
NPHCDA: Over 1 million Nigerian residents receive second dose of coronavirus vaccine
The executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, says 1,005,234 people have received the second dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Shuaib disclosed this on Thursday, during a media briefing in Abuja. He said the agency has extended the timeline for the administration of second dose by 11 days — from June 25 to July 5 — to enable more people to be vaccinated. He said those who received their first doses before May 13, can go to any centre to get the second dose. For those who have received the first dose, Shuaib said the figure now stands at 2,099,568. He added that the administration of the first dose is ongoing, and urged those who fall within the approved category to approach the designated centres to receive the vaccine...
Nigeria records 63 new coronavirus cases
Nigeria on Friday recorded 63 new coronavirus infections in seven states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The new figure raised the total number of infections in the country to 166,254, an update published by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Friday night indicates. According to the update, no new death was recorded from the virus, which has already claimed 2,071 lives in the country. The data shows that the new COVID-19 cases were reported in seven states and Abuja. Lagos recorded 25 cases, closely followed by Ondo with 22. Rivers State reported six while Akwa Ibom and Kaduna reported three each. Also, Kwara State reported two while Ebonyi and FCT reported one each. A breakdown of the data shows that 11 people were discharged on Friday after testing negative for the vi...
Coronavirus: Nigeria has vaccinated over 1 million people – NPHCDA
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has announced that Nigeria had so far vaccinated over a million eligible people out of its target of 70 percent of the nation’s population. The NPHCDA disclosed this on its official Twitter handle, on Thursday. Newsmen report that for the country to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, it had set an ambitious goal of vaccinating 40 per cent of its over 200 million population before the end of 2021, and 70 per cent by the end of 2022. The country kicked off vaccination on March 5, 2021, commencing with healthcare workers who are mostly at risk to the infections, being the first responders. It noted that the vaccine roll-out would be in four phases, starting with health workers, frontline workers, COVID-19 rapid response team, l...
Nigeria records 110 new coronavirus infections
Nigeria on Wednesday reported 110 new COVID-19 cases in 11 states. Also, no new death was recorded from the virus for the sixth consecutive day across the country. This is according to an update published by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Wednesday night. With no deaths in the past six days, the fatality toll in the country has remained 2,058 in total. The 110 new cases are higher than the 58 infections recorded a day earlier. The new figure raised the total number of infections in the West African nation to 163, 440, according to the NCDC data. In the past one week, there has been a further decline in new cases as daily infections have fallen below 200. Daily infections averaged over 1,000 between December 2020 and February 2021. The 110 new cases were reported from 11 stat...
Kogi government expresses readiness to start coronavirus vaccination
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...
NPHCDA boss: Nigerian government ‘took more measures’ to secure right coronavirus vaccine
The executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, says the federal government took more measures than many countries to ensure the selection of the right COVID-19 vaccine for Nigerians. Shuaib said this on Friday at the launch of COVID-19 vaccination programme, held at the National Hospital in Abuja. He said even though there were concerns about the delay in getting the vaccine, it was more important to get the doses suitable for the country. “We’ve said it before now, that it is not how fast, but how well. It is not how fast we get the vaccines here, but making sure that we get the right vaccines for our environment; getting the right vaccines that are suitable for our cold-chain infrastructure,” he said. “We took all of the measures th...
Reps speaker urges Nigerians not to believe conspiracy theories about coronavirus vaccine
The speaker of the house of representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has advised Nigerians not to believe conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccines. Many Nigerians are wary about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine amid unverified claims that it contains microchips. Faisal Shuaib, chief executive officer of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), had recently dismissed the claims as false. The first shipment of the vaccines– 3.9 million doses– arrived in Nigeria on Tuesday and the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine was administered today. Speaking at the national flag-off ceremony for the COVID-19 vaccination in Abuja, Gbajabiamila urged Nigerians to rally behind the federal government to fight the pandemic. He also cautioned against playing politics with the vaccinati...
Governors reach decisions on coronavirus vaccine roll-out
The Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) has asked the federal government to take the necessary steps to support logistics and inoculation activities in states to ensure a smooth vaccine roll-out exercise across the country. According to a communique on Friday by Chairman of the Forum and Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, at the end of the 27th emergency teleconference meeting, the governors said efforts must be made to initiate the launch of the vaccination programme in all states from 10th March 2021. Kayode said the Forum received a briefing from the Executive Secretary of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib, in the company of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman of the Presidential Tax Force (PTF) on COVID-19, ...
NPHCDA: States yet to meet conditions won’t get coronavirus vaccines
National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, said, yesterday, that states yet to meet the criteria for COVID-19 vaccines would not get a share of the 3.92 million AstraZeneca vaccines received by the country on Tuesday. Executive Director of the agency, Dr Faisal Shuaib, who disclosed this at a State House briefing in Abuja, also said President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo would be vaccinated publicly tomorrow, while members of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, would have theirs on Monday. He said: “After we are able to get our strategic leaders to publicly demonstrate that these vaccines are safe, the plan is to now go to the state level to start the launch at the treatment centres of the states and also get strategic leaders, such as governors, to publi...
Nigeria expects 41 million coronavirus vaccine doses from African Union
Nigeria expects to receive 41 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from the African Union, the head of the country’s primary healthcare agency said on Monday, while the health minister said vaccines from Russia and India were being considered. Authorities in Africa’s most populous country, which has 200 million people, plan to inoculate 40% of the population this year and another 30% in 2022. The African Union initially secured 270 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from manufacturers for member states. Last week it was announced that the bloc would receive another 400 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Faisal Shuaib, who heads the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said Nigeria’s previous request for 10 million doses through the AU had been increased four-fold. “We have applied...
PTF: Nigeria records four cases of UK coronavirus variant strain
Mr Boss Mustapha, Chairman, Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, said Nigeria recorded four cases of COVID-19, B117 variant strain, first reported in the UK. The PTF chairman made the disclosure at national briefing on Monday in Abuja. Mustapha said; “over the last few weeks, the PTF had been closely following the rising number of infections reported daily in Nigeria and in other jurisdictions. “Similarly, our scientists have been sequencing the variants of the virus. “There have been reports of cases with the B117 variant strain first reported in the UK, found in Nigeria. Three of these were in travelers out of Nigeria and one in a resident,”. He also stated that the daily statistics for Nigeria as at January 24, 2020 showed that cas...
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