Nigeria receives 3.2M doses of COVID-19 vaccine sent by US

By Adam Abu-bashal

ABUJA, Nigeria (AA) – Nigeria received 3.2 million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine sent by the US, an official said on Wednesday.

The vaccines, sent under the World Health Organization's COVID-19 vaccines global access program (COVAX), were delivered to Nigerian authorities at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in the capital Abuja.

Faisal Shuaib, executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said the vaccines will help in the country's vaccination campaign against COVID-19.

The vaccines have an expiration date of more than six months, he also said, adding they will be distributed across the country soon.

The Nigerian government destroyed more than a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine sent to the country in December 2021 as they had expired.

The government then announced that it would no longer accept vaccines with a short expiration date.

In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, more than 251,300 people has been infected with the coronavirus, nearly 225,000 have recovered, and over 3,000 have died.

Since December 2019, the coronavirus has claimed over 5.56 million lives in at least 192 countries and regions, with nearly 338 million cases confirmed worldwide, according to US-based Johns Hopkins University.

* Writing by Merve Berker