Kano State government on Saturday clarified on those that would be first recipients of the 3,557 doses of COVID-19 vaccines it will be getting from the federal government.
Responding to a question at a COVID-19 sensitization meeting with media executives in the state, the coordinator of the state’s COVID-19 Technical Response Team, Dr. Hussaini Tijjani said health workers will be first on the line of those to be administered with the vaccine.
Daily Trust reports that Kano will be getting the highest of the first 100,000 COVID-19 vaccines to be procured by the federal government while Lagos will get 3,131; Katsina, 2,361; Kaduna, 2,074; Bauchi, 1,900; Oyo, 1,848; Rivers, 1,766; Jigawa, 1,712 and Nasarawa will get the lowest with 661.
He said even among the health workers, those at isolation centres and others at the front line in the fight against the virus would be targeted first and after the health workers have been covered adults over 50years and those with co-morbidities would be targeted.
Dr. Tijjani explained that the federal government is responsible for procuring, transportation and distribution of the vaccines and it has appointed a technical working group for these, adding that the vaccines will be coming at almost zero cost implication for the state government barring a need for counterpart funding as is with other vaccines.
He said the vaccination will be targeted meaning not everybody will benefit from it in the 2 years where 40% of the country’s population will be covered in 2021 and 30% will be covered in 2022.
On his part, the state’s governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje stressed that “COVID-19 is a fight we must succeed and I think we are succeeding.”
He said the state will soon launch COVID-19 marshal that will assist in sensitising and enforcing the compliance of COVID-19 protocols, adding that these marshals will work with the security agencies and NGOs as the state reintroduced mobile courts for defaulters.
The governor added that similar measures used in combating polio will be deployed to kick out COVID-19 from Kano and the country at large.
