OSBC Osun State Broadcasting Corporation
One month into the national COVID-19 vaccination exercise in Nigeria, a total of 1,043,737 eligible Nigerians have so far been vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine, representing 51.9 per cent of the proportion vaccinated.
An update released by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, on Wednesday showed that each of the 36 states including the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, had vaccinated at least 5,500 persons.
A breakdown of the NPHCDA update contained in an Electronic Management of Immunisation Data, EMID, System, further revealed that Lagos is leading in the exercise with 192,061 persons vaccinated.
Three other states trailing Lagos are Kano 56,942; Kaduna 55,604 and Ogun 52,513.
Other states that have recorded 5-digit figures in the exercise are FCT 44,098; Katsina 39,297; Bauchi 35,764; Oyo 34,755; Ondo 31,348;
Kwara 30,708; Jigawa 27,644; Plateau 27,334; Edo 27,129; Gombe 26,807; Niger 26,659; Rivers 26,572; Ekiti 22,735; Yobe 21,030; Benue 20,981; Osun 20,869; Borno 20,737; Delta 20,525; Imo 18,763; Adamawa 18,612; Nasarawa 16,860; Kebbi 15,531; Zamfara 15,251; Cross River 14,483; Sokoto 11,560; Akwa Ibom 11,350; Enugu 11,018; Bayelsa 10, 487.
In the league of 4-digit states are Anambra 9,989; Ebonyi 8,534; Taraba 7,538; Abia and Kogi recorded 6,081 and 5,568 respectively.
The bulk of those vaccinated in the phase 1 of the national vaccination campaign, include frontline health workers, support staff and other health workers as well as first responders in the military, paramilitary and other security agencies, including the immigration services.
Other frontline workers including essential workers such as teachers, the clergy, and journalists, among others, participated.
The second phase of the roll out, set to begin immediately targets adults aged 50 and older (with or without an underlying disease) but starting with those aged 60 and older.
Nigeria fails to meet 2m testing target one year after Precisely one year after Nigeria set out to conduct two million COVID-19 tests within three months, the country is yet to achieve the goal.
The ambitious target, set by the Federal government was to have been met between May and July 2020, as a strategy to bridge the gap in testing and containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
In April 2020 wwhen the target was set by the laboratory strategic group, less than 5,000 tests had been conducted overall.
The Nigeria Centre for Diseases Control, NCDC, in its update for April 13, 2021, revealed that Nigeria had carried out tests on a total of 1,838,174 samples, equivalent to 8,749 tests per one million population.
As part of measures to achieve the target, the NCDC planned to boost the national testing capacity would from 10,000 tests to 30,000 tests daily.
The plan was to test an estimated 50,000 people in each state and the FCT.
But the latest figures showed that with 1,838,174 samples tested in a population of over 210 million, less than 50 percent of the set target had been met.
