The Lagos State Government today started the vaccination of healthcare workers, frontline workers, essential duty personnel and strategic leaders against COVID, signalling the commencement of the first phase of the Roll-out, Distribution and Administration of COVID vaccination campaign in the State.

At the vaccination flag-off campaign held inside the Mainland Infectious Disease Hospital, Yaba, the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu; his deputy, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat, as well as the Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi received shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine respectively.

The trio, who received a vaccination certificate with a barcode after taking the vaccine, allayed fears of side effects and safety of the vaccine, stressing that it is safe and effective.

“I have just received a shot of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine and as you can see, I am okay. We have started administering the vaccine to our health workers who are indeed the frontline staff.

They have been gracious to allow me to receive my shot and I commend them.

“I want to also encourage the rest of our health workers both in private and public health facilities to continue to receive the vaccine. We will continue to have our strategies rolled out on how to get people vaccinated.

“We think this is the best thing for us and for our nation and we want to encourage all our workers that would be called upon, especially the frontline workers to go get vaccinated at designated vaccination sites. We hope to put this behind us very soon and I want to encourage citizens to refrain from information we know nothing about”, Governor Sanwo-Olu said.

Speaking in the same vein, the Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Dr. Obafemi Hamzat said: “I have received my shot of the vaccine, the nurse that attended to me is very professional and as you can see, I am okay. The world has vaccinated about 346 million people and I am now one of those, the essence is to prevent illness and death, so I encourage everyone to get the vaccine”.

The Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi after receiving a shot of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine said the process feels essentially painless.

“As you can see, I have received my first vaccination, it was essentially painless, I don’t feel anything, I am standing, I feel okay. I am now a legitimate and proud owner of a COVID19 vaccine certificate with a barcode.

“The barcode cannot be faked. Your information goes into an international database and once the barcode is scanned, it brings out your details and it would be compared with the information on your legitimate ID card. So, anybody who is thinking of faking this activity and certificate, it is not going to work. I encourage everybody to wait for their phase and come out to collect the vaccine to improve their protection against COVID19”, Abayomi said.

Earlier at a Press Briefing held to give information on the roll-out of the vaccination campaign, the Commissioner explained that the vaccination would be carried out in phases in order of priority.

His words: “We have received 507,742 doses of the COVID19 AstraZeneca vaccine. These vaccines arrived in Lagos in the early hours of the 9th of March. They have been collected under security detail by our Primary Health Care Board that is responsible for routine immunisation in the State.

They have been kept in our cold chain facilities and are to be distributed under the appropriate protocols to the centres where the vaccinations will be conducted”.

Abayomi explained that there is an elaborate plan to roll-out the vaccination campaign in four phases beginning with frontline workers and healthcare professionals as well as members of the security apparatus in the State. This, he said, is according to the Federal plan developed by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).

“The first phase will include all frontline workers, health professionals, staff at port health, air, land and sea, members of the police, military, all laboratory staff, the judiciary and the COVID-19 rapid response team.

“Phase two, which will commence immediately after phase one, will include anybody over the age of 50 as well as those living with what we described as comorbidities which are, essentially, hypertension, diabetics or any other underlying health conditions that predispose you to developing severe or critical COVID19 disease.

“In addition, within phase two we will also be vaccinating anyone between the age of 18 and 49 if they have any of the comorbidities that I just described. Phase three and phase four will include everyone else that wishes to vaccinate and especially within the high disease burden local government areas”, Abayomi explained.

He added that the vaccination plan for Lagos has been slightly adjusted to cater for the peculiarity of the State which is a megacity. This, he added, came about after a thorough assessment of the vaccination plan by Governor Sanwo-Olu’s 14-man, COVID-19 vaccination technical working group.

“We are expecting the process to roll-out seamlessly in terms of security and crowd control and we have nominated 88 sites at which the vaccination will commence from Monday. Citizens can visit the https://nphcdaict.com.ng/publicreg/ to register for vaccination in their respective phases”, Commissioner noted.