KOGI: Finally govt receives doses of Astrazeneca vaccine

THE state has finally taken delivery of about 16, 900 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Executive Director of Kogi State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Abubakar Yakubu led a team of officials of the agency and Kogi Ministry of Health to receive the vaccines at the National Programme on Immunisation Unit of the State Central Medical Store, Lokoja on last night.

Yakubu said the most awaited Covid-19 vaccines arrived in Kogi from Abuja at about 7:40 pm and vaccination is scheduled to begin today.

”We have about 16,900 doses of the vaccine, and by tomorrow Tuesday, we hope to flag off the campaign in the Ministry of Health.

”The first-line of recipients of the vaccines are the health workers which will be demonstrated on Tuesday by 12 noon at the ministry.

”The vaccine administration will be followed by the frontline essential non-health workers like the police, military, NSCDC, Custom men among others,” Yakubu said.

Yakubu said the State was initially expecting about 45,000 doses of the vaccines from NPHCDA, which accounted for one percent of the total population of Kogi State.

”But to our surprise, we are being supplied with 16,900 doses now, I think there will be further reconciliation to send the balance of the doses as soon as possible,” he said.

Kogi has been in the news recently because of the position of the Governor of the state, Yahaya Bello, on the ravaging pandemic.

Bello, who is an inveterate doubter of the existence of the virus, has said the vaccine is least of the worry of his state.

He stressed that he won’t allow his people to be turned into “guinea pigs”.

Prior to the time Nigeria received its doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine, Bello had warned people to be wary of the Covid-19 vaccine saying it’s meant to kill and not to cure.