April 16, 2021

The number of eligible people who have taken their first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria has exceeded the one million mark.

This was revealed by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) on Thursday in an update on the vaccination exercise across the country.

A total of 1,051,096 people have received the vaccine as more people continue to take the jabs across all states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), including Kogi State where authorities began the exercise late.

The latest figure indicates that 7,359 more eligible people took the vaccine jabs in 24 hours, following the 1,043,737 total figure that was reported on Wednesday.

It also shows an increase of 0.3 per cent of the proportion vaccinated, compared with the 51.9 per cent earlier reported.

A further breakdown of the figure reveals that Lagos has the highest number of eligible people who have taken the vaccine jabs with a total of 193,794 with 76.3 per cent of target reached.

The south-west state, which is described as the epicentre of the pandemic in Nigeria, maintains its status as the only state to have surpassed the 100,000 mark.

Coming after Lagos as states with the highest number of people that have received the vaccine are Kano, Kaduna, and Ogun where 57,165; 55,756; and 52,613 eligible people have been vaccinated, respectively.

The NPHCDA explained that the figures were compiled from the system dashboard of the Electronic Management of Immunisation Data (EMID).

Nigeria commenced the vaccination exercise with the vaccination of four frontline healthcare workers in Abuja on March 5 – three days after the vaccines arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, the nation’s capital.