COVID-19: Highlights of Steering Committee briefing

14 Sep COVID-19: Highlights of Steering Committee briefing

The Chairman Presidential Steering Committee (PSC) on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha said the federal government has projected that it will receive about 55 million doses of vaccines by April 2022 to ensure that more Nigerians are vaccinated.

* The federal government has removed India from the list of countries affected by the travel restriction that was introduced on May 4 to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

* Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, said that the Delta variant “is the dominant strain in the country”, requiring Nigerians to keep all the prescribed protective measures in place and increase testing.

* The Executive Director National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) Dr. Faisal Shuaib said that as at September 12, 2021, the country had attained a national average of 70.4 per cent utilisation of the 2,000,040 doses of Moderna vaccines it received. A total of 4,052,756 eligible persons had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, comprising of 2,645,020 persons with the first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine and 1,407,736 eligible persons with the first dose of Moderna vaccine.

He said: “A recent study by the United States Centre for Disease Control (USCDC) which examined 600,000 COVID-19 cases, revealed that people who were unvaccinated were about four and a half times more likely to contract COVID-19.

* Monday Caseload: Nigeria, on Monday, reported a surge in deaths to 21, with 387 new cases. There are now 199538 confirmed 188427 recoveries and 2619 deaths.

The new cases were reported from 16 states: Lagos (114), Rivers (91), FCT (32), Edo (31), Delta (28), Kwara (20), Bayelsa (18), Akwa Ibom (15), Oyo (10), Osun (8), Gombe (5), Plateau (5), Ekiti (4), Ogun (3), Kano (2) and Kaduna (1)

* New local COVID-19 infections more than doubled in China’s southeastern province of Fujian, health authorities said on Tuesday, prompting officials to quickly roll out measures including travel restrictions to halt the spread of the virus. The National Health Commission said 59 new locally transmitted cases were reported for Sept. 13, up from 22 infections a day earlier.