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Nigerian authorities recently announced that they hope to vaccinate 40% of the population by 2021.
Nigerian officials have warned of fake coronavirus vaccines in the country where 10 million actual doses of the vaccine are expected to arrive in March.
“There are reports of fake vaccines in Nigeria,” Nigerian National Agency for Administrative and Pharmaceutical Control (NAFDAC) Director General Mojisola Adeyeye said on Friday.
“NAFDAC begs the public to beware. No COVID vaccine has been approved by NAFDAC. Fake vaccines can cause COVID-like illnesses or other serious illnesses that could kill. “
Nigeria’s planned vaccines are in addition to the expected 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, although it was not specified what type of vaccine would be used for the 10 million doses.
It was also unclear whether the lot would be funded by the African Union (AU) or under COVAX, which connects the World Health Organization (WHO) with private partners to work on pooled procurement and to an equitable distribution.
Nigerian authorities recently announced that they hope to vaccinate 40% of the population by 2021.
But the challenges of transporting and storing vaccines for millions of people are enormous in a country where adequate hospital facilities are lacking.
In April last year, black market coronavirus testing flourished in Nigeria because citizens were reluctant to be subject to mandatory quarantine.
The most populous country in Africa, with an estimated 200 million people, Nigeria has officially reported some 104,000 cases of COVID-19, with 1,382 deaths.
But it is believed that these figures are below the real result since the number of tests is low.
Cases have increased sharply since the end of November, especially in the economic capital Lagos, a city of about 20 million inhabitants. The death rate has also increased.
A variant strain of coronavirus has been discovered in recent months. It was found in two patient samples collected on August 3 and October 9 in the Nigerian state of Osun, according to a working research paper viewed by the Associated Press news agency.
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