Ehanire: Four states have fully vaccinated 70% of eligible residents against COVID

Osagie Ehanire, minister of health, says four states have fully vaccinated 70 percent of their eligible population.

Speaking on Thursday at a meeting with northern traditional leaders, Ehanire said the federal government has been doing all within its power to provide adequate COVID-19 vaccines for the country.

He added that there are enough COVID-19 vaccines for first, second and booster doses across all states in the country.

“Your royal highness, this is urge you to continue to encourage our people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and other vaccine-preventable diseases as NPHCDA has integrated all these services to ensure that every vaccination site serves as a one stop site for the vaccination of the entire family. We need to quickly increase coverage across all states to achieve our national target of vaccinating at least 70% of eligible populations 18 years and older,” he said.

“I want to specially commend Nasarawa, Jigawa, Kano and Kaduna states who have the highest fully vaccinated persons and have reached the 70% target of fully vaccinated eligible population for COVID-19. I urge other states to emulate these states to enable the country build immunity against COVID-19 and reach the desired national coverage.”

According to data from the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), 41,642,029 of the total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination have been fully vaccinated while 12,856,163 of the total eligible persons have been partially vaccinated.

The data shows that Nasarawa has fully vaccinated 1,854,106 residents; Jigawa, 3,812,466; Kano, 5,995,854; and Kaduna, 3,722,253 persons.

Also speaking at the event, Faisal Shuaib, executive director of the NPHCDA, said 130 cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVPV2) variant have been detected across 16 states of the country in 2022.

“Although this is about 82 percent reduction compared to the same period in 2021 when we had 711 cVPV2, this is still worrisome as we are witnessing breakthrough transmissions in two states namely Sokoto and Zamfara,” he said.

“I therefore humbly urge your Excellencies, Eminence and Highnesses, not to rest on your oars as we will continue to leverage your influence to increase individual and community demand for all PHC services, particularly Polio and COVID-19 vaccination but also maternal and child healthcare services.”