COVID-19: Nearly two years after deployment, Nigeria vaccinates only 25% of eligible population – Official

About 17 months after rolling out vaccination against the raging coronavirus pandemic, the Nigerian government said only 27 million eligible people had been fully vaccinated.

The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib revealed this on Monday in Abuja at the launch of the SCALES 3.0 strategy.

Mr. Shuaib said the country's vaccination coverage had increased from around 17 million to 40 million for the first dose as of August 8.

He noted that the number of eligible people who are fully vaccinated currently stands at 27,703,573.

“Therefore, the proportion of the total eligible population that has been vaccinated in Nigeria is 25%,” he said.

Far from the target

To achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, Nigeria had set an ambitious goal of vaccinating 40% of its more than 200 million people by the end of 2021 and 70% by the end from 2022.

This is based on the recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Speaking before the vaccine was rolled out in 2021, Shuaib said around 40% would be vaccinated in 2021, while the remaining 30% would be covered in 2022.

To vaccinate 70% of Nigeria's estimated population of 200 million, that means 140 million people will have received their full doses by the end of the year.

But with only about 27 million people vaccinated so far, Nigeria may not meet its target.

Nigeria is not the only country left behind in the race to vaccinate against COVID-19. According to WHO, only two African countries, Mauritius and Seychelles, had fully vaccinated 70% of their population by the end of June.

SCALES 3.0 strategy

Mr. Shuaib said the country has seen an increase in vaccination rates largely thanks to the optimized SCALES 2.0 strategy launched in February this year, to accelerate integrated COVID-19 vaccination and primary health care services.

He said, however, that a strategic review showed there was a low perception of risk from COVID-19 that needs to be overcome.

He said that analyzes of the performance of various states also show that there are significant state-specific bottlenecks that need to be addressed in their different contexts for the country to witness better use of resources. vaccines.

“It is for these and other reasons that the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 and the Federal Department of Health, through the NPHCDA, have proposed SCALES 3.0,” he said. he declared.

He explained that SCALES 3.0 is an evidence-based update that fixes bugs in SCALES 2.0 and uses human-centric demand generation design to address the low COVID-19 risk perception in the country.

Mr. Shuaib said the strategy retains the integration of COVID-19 vaccination with other primary health care services, but uses an implementation approach that aims to address bottlenecks on the delivery of services, communication, liability and logistics.

To address service delivery issues, the executive director said SCALES 3.0 will operate in targeted campaign mode with mobile and special teams bringing vaccines to where people live and work.

He said this would resolve operational issues with Fixed Posts, Temporary Fixed Posts, and Mass Vaccination Sites that were observed in SCALES 2.0.

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He said SCALES 3.0 supports logistics and timely payment of vaccination teams that have met thresholds and targets.

“This simply means that SCALES 3.0 will not only track vaccination activities, quickly detect and address inappropriate and fraudulent activities using our joint task force, but will also implement an incentive mechanism based on performance carefully designed to encourage accountability. and superior performance,” he said.

Fill gaps

In his remarks, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, said that Nigeria continues to experience changes in the factors that influence the demand for and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines.

Mr. Mustapha said these changing situations vary from state to state and there...