AstraZeneca Vaccine: Why Medical Professionals Should Ideally Receive Medicine Before Elderly Individuals, Others - COVID-19 Frontline Healthcare Worker

Sheriffdeen Ewunuga, one of the healthcare workers at the frontline of Nigeria’s struggle with COVID-19, has made a case for Coronavirus healthcare workers to be administered the AstraZeneca Vaccine first, even before the old ones.

Dr. Ewunuga, a registered and licensed health practitioner in Lagos state, explained that health workers need to be safe so as to reduce the transmission rate of COVID-19, thus they should be given priority during inoculation.

"We have four phases. The first set is for all health workers. Both at private facilities and at public facilities," Dr. Ewunuga said recently on Spirit of Nigeria Radio, in a broadcast monitored by this reporter.

"Before the implementation of the programme, we had some officers that were sent to each ward, trying to coordinate all facilities in each ward, because we are used to the government's facilities in our wards.

"All health workers will be vaccinated, except anybody who says no.

"Doctors, nurses, cleaners, everybody involved in clinical activities will be put into consideration.

"If the health workers that will attend to the elderly are not taking care of, then the elderlies are not safe.

"If the health workers are taken care of first, it reduces the risk faced by the elderly people.

"Attending to the health worker first, I think is the best idea."

Dr. Ewunuga sees nothing wrong in giving the AstraZeneca Vaccine to healthcare workers first

Lagos state started its COVID-19 vaccination campaign last Friday after receiving over 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca jab, despite concerns in some countries over the safety of the vaccine.

The Lagos state health commissioner Akin Abayomi told reporters that authorities had spent a long time looking over the data and concluded that there was "no reason for us to slow down our COVID-19 vaccination response."

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Some countries, mostly in Europe, have paused the use of the AstraZeneca jab following sporadic reports of blood clots.

But the European Medicines Agency said there was no evidence of an increase in dangerous blood clots in connection with the shots.

Health workers and front-line responders began receiving the vaccine in Lagos last week.

Nigeria is among more than 180 countries worldwide receiving vaccines through the COVAX initiative.

As of 15 March 2021, more than 119 million cases have been confirmed, with more than 2.65 million deaths attributed to COVID-19, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.