Boss Mustapha, the Secretary to the Federal Government, has declared that Nigeria has sufficient vaccines to reach over 70% of the country’s population by the end of 2022.
Boss Mustapha announced this at the national COVID-19 conference held at the Muhammadu Buhari Conference Centre in Abuja.
‘Pushing Through the Last Mile to End the Pandemic and Rebuild Better’ was the theme of the summit.
He claims that the vaccines are safe and that “vaccination against the virus is better and safer.”
The conference, according to Mustapha, will provide an opportunity to assess successes, gaps, and lessons learned in Nigeria’s national response to the epidemic since March 2020.
He went on to say that the summit’s goal is to establish methods for putting international commitments into action in order to terminate COVID-19 by the end of 2022.
“Today, we are here to assess the level of impact of our national response and develop strategies as we push through the last mile to end the pandemic while we build back better,” he said.
“There is no gainsaying that the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria, which was triggered when the index case was confirmed on the 27th of February 2020, precipitated significant disruptions to the healthcare system and socio-economic lives of Nigerians.
”Due to the evolving dynamics of COVID-19 pandemic with progressive mutations of the virus to more transmissible and deadly variants, the international community has corroborated the insinuation that the pandemic will persist for few more years.
“This understanding has impelled world leaders recently to come to a conclusion that if efforts are not renewed and aggressive measures are not taken, COVID-19 pandemic will continue to ravage humanity well longer than earlier envisaged. Hence the need to adopt an ambitious (but cautious) agenda to end the COVID-19 pandemic by the year 2022.
“Nigeria has invested in enough vaccines that can cover over 70% of our population before the end of 2022. These vaccines are safe and efficacious, hence it is better and safer to be vaccinated against this virus, now.”
According to him, the summit is a continuation of Nigeria’s commitment to the ambitious global agenda/movement to end the COVID-19 epidemic by 2022 and rebuild better.
“Global efforts at ending COVID-19 pandemic are intrinsically linked to the call for nations of the world to take steps towards strengthening their health system and bio-security- which will make for better pandemic preparedness and the ability to respond more robustly and swiftly to future pandemics,” Mustapha said.
He urged stakeholders to encourage all eligible individuals to be vaccinated and to continue to follow the COVID-19 preventive measures.
