Nigerians Will Get COVID-19 Vaccine For Free, FG Assures

The Federal Government has assured Nigerians that Coronavirus vaccine will be given for free.

Sani Aliyu, National Coordinator, Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 (PTF), gave the assurance when he appeared as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday.

Aliyu said through the GAVI arrangement, there is the assurance that over 40 million Nigerians will be vaccinated.

“Yesterday, the president gave the PTF the mandate to proceed with preparations with regard to the vaccine,” Aliyu said.

“The president has also given us a marching order that the COVID-19 vaccine be available in Nigeria.

“Making use of the GAVI arrangement, we already have assurance that 20 percent of our population will be accommodated by GAVI in the vaccine.

“We don’t need to pay for that and this will cover 40 million Nigerians or so. But we have to pay for the operations and the logistics associated with it.”

GAVI is a vaccine alliance of which bid to find solution to the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through vaccines birthed COVAX.

COVAX is one of the three pillars of Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator. It was launched in April by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Commission and France, bringing together governments, manufacturers, scientists, the private sector, philanthropy and the civil society in response to the pandemic and ensuring equitable access to COVID-19 vaccine and treatments when available.

The PTF national coordinator further said there were plans to buy additional vaccines besides the GAVI arrangement.

“We are also planning to pay for an additional 20 to 40 percent. In general, over the next two years, at least 70 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated before we can have enough herd immunity,” he said.

“The Pfizer vaccine is one of the most effective vaccines at the moment.”

When asked if the vaccine would be administered free, Aliyu said, “of course, of course”.