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ABUJA/LAGOS, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Nigeria has not yet found the
South African variant of COVID-19 in its population and will
continue with plans to distribute the AstraZeneca
vaccine, the head of the country's primary healthcare agency
said on Monday.
On Sunday, South Africa said it would put its use of the
AstraZeneca shot on hold after research showed it was only
minimally effective in preventing mild illness against the
coronavirus variant dominant in the country.
Faisal Shuaib, director of Nigeria's national primary
healthcare development agency, said authorities were diligently
searching test samples for the South African strain, and
subjecting samples from travellers returning from the United
Kingdom and South Africa to further genomic sequencing.
"We will continue to work with (regulators) to ensure that
only a vaccine that is effective against the predominant
COVID-19 strain in Nigeria will be administered," Shuaib said.
Nigeria is expecting to receive 16 million doses of the
AstraZeneca shot under the COVAX programme. It said it will move
forward with the vaccine once it is certified by the World
Health Organization, which it expects within days.
Shuaib has said Nigeria had also applied for 7.6 million
doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 18.4 million of the
Johnson & Johnson vaccine and was further considering vaccines
from Russia and India.
"AstraZeneca is not the only vaccine we have access to," he
said, adding: "We do have options in case the South African
variant is found in Nigeria."
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with 200 million
citizens, has reported 139,748 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and
1,667 deaths.
(Reporting by Felix Onuah in Abuja and Libby George in Lagos
Editing by Mark Heinrich)
