Lagos governor: We’re talking to coronavirus vaccine manufacturers

Nigeria’s commercial capital city of Lagos is the epicenter of the nation’s novel coronavirus outbreak; with over 44,000 of the nation’s total confirmed COVID-19 infections of 121, 566 as of January 24, 2021.

Pharmaceutical and Biotech firms outdid themselves to produce COVID-19 vaccines in record time in 2020, as the planet tries to emerge from beneath the shadows of the virus–although that goal is still a far way off.

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With limited doses of vaccines available worldwide at the moment, Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu says he’s been in touch with some of the manufacturers to get some badly needed doses of COVID-19 vaccines for Lagosians, a separate arrangement from the federal government’s plan to ship in 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines before the end of January.

“We actually want the federal government to take the lead on vaccines and rightfully so. As a sovereign, they have all of the protocols and contacts to make that happen and we are conversing…we are still having another meeting on Tuesday with PTF (Presidential Task Force) and NCDC (Nigeria Center for Disease Control) under the federal umbrella,” Sanwo-Olu said during a ChannelsTV dinner programme of Sunday, January 24, 2021.

“Internationally, there’s a coalition of 190 countries working with the WHO (World Health Organisation) to ensure that poor nations and disadvantaged nations must have the vaccine at some point.

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“We want the nation to take the lead and we are giving them that space and because they are a sovereign, they can have that conversation. But as a subnational, we are also taking our destiny in our hands.

“We have started conversations with some of the vaccine manufacturers, you know…Pfizer for example, I have made contact with them, Oxford Astrazeneca…I have made contact with them…Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine isn’t out yet…Moderna has written to us and we’ve written back to them.

“So we are making our own subnational contacts. Once we see what the nation is doing…because we do not want to begin to deal with middlemen and people that are not frontline suppliers. We don’t want to run foul of the protocols. But we’ve started making contacts, even at the board level, with the manufacturers. How that will work out, we still have a week or two to see,” he said.

The governor also stated that the goal is to attain herd immunity in the nation’s most populous city.

“And it’s important to state that we don’t have to vaccinate the 20 million or 22 million people in Lagos. The plan is around to ensure that there is herd immunity. That typically speaks to 50 or 60 percent of your population. That’s the kind of target that you need to really meet,” he added.

Nigeria is still implementing COVID-19 restrictions in a bid to curb further spread of the virus, after emerging from total lockdowns and implementation of strict preventative protocols for most of 2020.

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