The Federal Government has said it does not know the specific date the expected AstraZeneca vaccines will be delivered to the country, adding that when the vaccines will arrive depends largely on the donor.

The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, on Friday disclosed this while speaking during a program on NTA.

Recall that the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, while addressing journalist at the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 briefing, stated that the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines may likely arrive the country in one week.

Also the World Health Organisation (WHO) had said Nigeria should expect four million doses from COVAX next week.

However, the Health Minister, Ehanire revealed that “When the vaccines will arrive depends actually on the donor. These vaccines are donated and they are provided by the COVAX facility. This COVAX facility is in the process of giving them to various countries, and you understand that after Ghana it is Ivory Coast. When ours will come exactly, we do not know. So it is not really in our hand.

“Ghana got its first shipment of 600,000 doses, but we are expecting four million doses – which is quite a size, and we are prepared to receive the vaccines as soon as it comes.

“All the preparations are down, and the launch will be at the National Hospital in Abuja, and they have been put on notice, and NPHCDA has done all the planning and micro-planning needed to get that process going.”

He added that “As for the protocols, we are following the recommendation by the WHO, which is to give attention to frontline health workers – those that are exposed to the risk of being infected and those who if they get infected, will create a vacuum in workforce; it includes those working in the laboratories and dealing with this virus.

 “The second category will be those who if they got infected, will be severely sick, and those are the elderly and those with vulnerable diseases like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, asthma etc. So they will be given priority. We are going to be scaling down from the health workers, those with vulnerabilities, to the age of 18. We are looking for what we call herd immunity to be able to immunise 70 percent of our citizens. We hope that with that and with the same process in the West African sub-region, we are all safe.”

The Minister further said “AstraZeneca is a two-dose vaccine. The Johnson & Johnson, which is among the ones we are getting from the African Union (AU) is a one-dose vaccine. The interval that is suggested with the AstraZeneca is three weeks, but some countries have demonstrated the experience that if you stretch that interval up to 12 weeks, you do get a better and longer lasting immune response. That is what has been recommended particularly in the UK.

“So, we are looking at what the UK experience brings and also what we see here. But it is from three weeks to 12 weeks.”