Nigeria may get Covid-19 vaccines in 10 days – Minister

MINISTER of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, has said that facilities have been put in place to receive the country’s Covid-19 vaccines possibly in the next 10 days.

He said, “We are told that by the end of this month, which is about 10 days from now, we shall get the vaccines,’’

“We do not produce the vaccines. They are manufactured abroad in about four or five countries,’’ he told newsmen at the end of an inspection tour of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba,

Ehanire explained that the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Russia and China that had succeeded in producing the vaccines were now giving licences to other countries to reproduce them.

Explaining while it is taking Nigeria so long to secure vaccines, Ehanire said countries that produced the vaccines had serious challenges with the lethal virus and decided to attend to their needs first.

He noted that the World Health Organisation has faulted the act by describing it as “vaccine nationalism”

Ehanire said the effect of vaccine nationalism is being witnessed across the world where only 10 countries have been the beneficiaries of the 75 per cent vaccines already produced despite the global spread of the disease

Welcoming the minister earlier, LUTH’s Chief Medical Director, Prof Chris Bode, asked the minister for assistance in the recruitment of 350 nurses, 50 consultants and 150 medical officers.

Prof. Bode said that the hospital also needed an Oxygen plant and increased funding to build a four-storey isolation centre, run the hospital effectively and pay huge monthly electricity bills.