COVID-19: Over N2.44tn Needed To Vaccinate 165M Nigerians

Oyewole Tomori, a Professor of Virologist on Wednesday said the Federal Government will need about N2.44 trillion for the vaccination of 164.8 million Nigerians, who will not have access to free vaccines the country is expecting from the international community.

Oyewole Tomori made this known in an interview with the Punch. He said vaccines like the Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Oxford cost between $10 and $50,    $10 and $3 to $4 per dose respectively.

Currently, coronavirus vaccines available globally include those prepared by Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson,  Oxford, and Novavax.

AllNews had earlier reported that the Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, at a   press conference of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja on Tuesday, said 100,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine would be received by the country at the end of this month.

According to him, the 42 million doses of the vaccines will only cover 20 percent of the country’s population, which the National Population Commission, recently put at 206 million.

Shuaib added that the NPHCDA, the PTF, and the Federal Ministry of Health were working on financial requirements for procuring more vaccines.

Speaking at the interview, Tomori advised the Federal Government not to procure vaccines that the country lacked the facility to store.

He said procuring a vaccine that would be difficult to store in Nigeria would be like adding to the problem of the pandemic in the country.

 “There are three or four different types of vaccines at the moment; there is the one from Pfizer that must be stored at -70°C; Moderna vaccine must be stored at -20°C and there are others that can be stored at fridge temperature,” he said.

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Commenting on the coverage of vaccination needed by the country, he stated, “The coverage will depend on the purpose and the vaccine. For Yellow fever, we asked for something about 80 percent coverage, but for COVID-19 we don’t know the duration of the immunity. Yellow fever, for example, when you get the vaccine, you get it almost for life. But for COVID-19, nobody knows how long the immunity of the vaccine will last.

“People have talked about covering 60 percent of the population. The 20 percent we are getting from Coarvex will not solve our problem. The answer to say is that we don’t know; it depends on the epidemiology of the disease in a country, the number of people infected and have recovered.”

Also, a professor of Virology at the College of Medicine,  Ibadan, Prof. Georgina Odaibo, said the Federal Government must build an effective work plan to ensure proper handling and application of the vaccine.

Odaibo said, “A national body will have to handle the distribution and determine issues around it. I think that the body that is responsible for the distribution of vaccines should handle that. I don’t know the nature and capacity of storage that they have everywhere across the country.

“For me, adherence to COVID-19 protocols is number one. Even if you bring the vaccine today, you cannot immunize everybody. It would take time before it goes round. It will be good for people to ensure that we practice what we know works is the use of face masks, wash your hands, and engage in physical distancing. It is very clear, if you practice those things, you would not need to rush for vaccines. We should know that it is not immediately the vaccines are imported that they would go round.”