The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, on Thursday said that unvaccinated Nigerians are the ones being hit by the deadly Delta variant of the Covid-19.
Ehanire disclosed this during a virtual press briefing with the World Health Organisation.
He said, “We have begun to see a pandemic of two tracks where the Delta variant is tearing through unvaccinated populations. The Delta variant was first detected two weeks ago, and we have begun to see an increase in the number of new cases.
“Nigeria has continued to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in the last 17 months. This has received the highest priority from our government, with a Presidential Steering Committee leading the multi-sector response, while the Federal Ministry of Health and its agencies such as the NCDC and the NPHCDA lead the health sector response and we will continue to give priority to this pandemic.”
The minister, therefore, disclosed that Nigeria would receive her consignment of 3,924,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX facility before the end of the month.
He said “Before the end of the month, we will receive 3,924,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca from the COVAX facility. We are also expecting 3,930,910 doses of Pfizer-bio N tech, Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in August that was donated by the United States. Also, 29,859,000 doses of the Johnson &Johnson vaccines will arrive by the end of September.”
A data from the NCDC on Thursday, showed that the COVID-19 tests reduced from 735,573 to 521,738 in three months amid warning by the Federal Government that Delta variant was spreading among unvaccinated Nigerians.
Epidemiological data obtained from the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control showed that since the first case of the Delta variant was reported on July 8, 2021, only about 23 states and the Federal Capital Territory had been sending reports to the NCDC.
The states that have been sending updates include Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and the FCT.
The 13 states that have not sent any results to the NCDC in the last two weeks include Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Ebonyi, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara states.
