The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has said a total of 1, 071, 346 Nigerians have taken their first dose of AstraZeneca Vaccine against COVID-19, thus meeting its earlier target of vaccinating one million people.
NPHCDA Executive Director, Faisal Shuaib, who disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja, said the figure represents 53.2 percent of people considered eligible for the vaccine, according to reports received from states through the Electronic Management of Immunization Data (EMID) system.
He however said the number did not include vaccinations not yet captured in the system.
“What this number means is that these are the people who have their information already uploaded on our database, while others are awaiting upload potentially due to network problems and the high traffic of those coming in to take their shots at the same time.
“While we continue to optimise our registration and immunization data system, we also encourage the state teams to deploy the most suitable internet service for their locations in order to speed up the data entry process, so that we can have the actual number of vaccinated people at any given time,” he said.
He said inoculation of frontline health workers in some states have been completed while attention has shifted to the elderly aged 65 and above.
The WHO country representative in Nigeria, Dr. Walter Molumbo, at the briefing also said that since the vaccination programme started, more than two million dosages have been administered.
