From Atiku Sarki, Abuja
As at Monday, about 1, 783,676 eligible Nigerians have so far received Covid-19 vaccination.
The Executive Director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib disclosed this at the media briefing in Abuja while updating Nigerians on Covid-19 vaccination rollout.
He said a total of 4,287,367 eligible persons have received their first doses of the vaccine.
This he said made up of 2,863,422 persons who have taken the first dose of Astrazeneca vaccine and 1,623,945 persons have also taken the first dose of Moderna vaccine.
The Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the agency also explained that the government of the United Kingdom has released a new travel advisory which would take effect from next month being.
According to him, the guidance provided by the UK Government is that they would want to simplify the classification of countries from green, amber and red light and the countries that are currently on the amber list may fall into either red or green.
He said without prejudice, they have assured that the country would maintain the status quo and would not be on the red list based with the preliminary discussion they had with official of the UK Government.
“The Oxford/Astrazeneca Vaccine, also known as COVISHIELD that is used in Nigeria was approved by the UK regulatory body (MHRA), other stringent regulatory authorities and the world Health Organization. So the UK Government does recognized the Vaccine used in Nigeria,” he said.
Explaining further, Dr. Faisal said that the UK Government is doing a phased approach to deal with the high demand volume of people arriving their country and for the Nigeria at the movement he said, there is no change in guidelines for entry Nigerian into UK or the UK citizen’s entry into Nigeria regardless of the Vaccination states.