Buhari also called for the speedy take-off of local production of mRNA vaccines, after the World Health Organisation (WHO) selected Nigeria as one of six African countries to receive technology needed to produce the vaccines.

The President disclosed this on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea while addressing the World Bio Summit 2022.

Buhari pledged commitment to global response to known or emerging pathogens, including the global vaccine assurance ecosystem and equitable access for all.

The President told the meeting jointly convened by the Government of South Korea and WHO to discuss the future of vaccines and Bio-Health across the globe, that Nigeria would continue to explore bilateral, multilateral and other opportunities for cutting-edge technology as a centre of excellence for vaccine manufacturing and distribution.

‘‘As the mRNA technology allows science to shift attention to yet unknown disease threats, we see opportunities to address diseases that have plagued sub-Saharan Africa and third world countries for centuries,” Buhari said.

‘‘We believe biomedical scientists can dream of ending the scourge of Malaria, Ebola, Lassa fever and various endemic neglected tropical diseases through development and manufacture of efficacious and affordable vaccines and therapeutics.

‘‘Nigeria invites partners ready to support efforts towards the entire value chain of vaccine technology development in our continent, to consider working with us in Nigeria,’’ he added.

Noting that ongoing conversations on the future of vaccines tend to support the decentralization of capacity to produce essential materials to respond globally to pandemics, Buhari expressed Nigeria’s preference for a global warehousing and supply chain strategy to attend to the needs of most countries.

‘‘We believe that this concept makes sense and we fully endorse the wisdom of strategic and balanced spread of critical manufacturing capacity and essential stockpiles across the globe,’’ Buhari said.

Buhari, therefore, declared that Nigeria is ready and able to offer itself for this initiative, due to its strategic geographical location, strength of economy and market size derived from a population of over 214 million people.

He added that Nigeria’s comparative advantage is also supported from her experience in human and animal vaccine production record since 1924, when colonial authorities produced WHO-certified smallpox, yellow fever and anti-rabies vaccines locally – a technology that has been improved upon and being used in Jos, Plateau State of Nigeria.

The decision followed a review of a pilot programme deployed since 2019 in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi where more than two million doses were given of the vaccine, first made by the pharmaceutical company GSK in 1987.

After reviewing evidence from those countries, WHO said it was “recommending the broad use of the world’s first malaria vaccine”, the agency’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

After reviewing evidence from those countries, WHO said it was “recommending the broad use of the world’s first malaria vaccine”, the agency’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The WHO said in a statement it was recommending the widespread application of the vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high malaria transmission.

Many vaccines exist against viruses and bacteria but this was the first time that the WHO recommended for broad use of a vaccine against a human parasite.

“From a scientific perspective this is a massive breakthrough,” said Pedro Alonso, Director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme.

The vaccine acts against plasmodium falciparum — one of five parasite species and the most deadly.

Malaria symptoms include fever, headaches and muscle pain, then cycles of chills, fever and sweating.

Every two minutes, a child dies of malaria, according to the World Health Organization.

Before the newly recommended vaccine can reach African children, the next step will be funding.

“That will be the next major step… Then we will be set up for scaling of doses and decisions about where the vaccine will be most useful and how it will be deployed,” said Kate O’Brien, Director of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals.

While stating this, Sanwo-Olu stressed that vaccine equity remained the only pathway for world leaders to end the COVID-19 pandemic in the globe.

The Governor stated this while speaking at the 2021 “Global Citizen Live Concert,” held at Fela’s Afrika Shrine in Ikeja.

On the vaccine equity, the Governor said, the world must ensure that vaccines were available to all, especially poorer countries that had struggled with supply.

Sanwo-Olu, noted that the situation of unequal distribution of vaccines in which richer nations secured more doses than the size of their populations and are preparing to roll out booster shots, while poorer countries struggled to administer first doses, threatening the global efforts to end the pandemic.

He said: “Our vaccination rate is far below the minimum target of 60 per cent recommended by the World Health Organisation (W.H.O) per city population. At the current rate, it would take about three years to achieve our herd immunity target. We cannot continue at this speed if we seriously want to beat this virus.

“To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of our population would need to be vaccinated to lower the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population.

“One of the objectives of attaining herd immunity is to prevent mutations from emerging leading to more aggressive strains. It is important that Lagos achieves herd immunity at the same time with all countries together.

“Our proposal to the private sector is to reserve and administer 50 per cent of the vaccines procured in partnership with the private sector to be made available free of charge at Government health centres.

“We propose to deploy a proven system where those who can pay for vaccines subsidise the cost of vaccination for those who cannot.

“Given the fact that we expect COVID-19 vaccinations to be annual going forward, this is the only sustainable path towards achieving herd immunity and making Lagos free of the virus.

“With our approach, we expect to vaccinate 30 per cent of the population of Lagos within one year.

“This will put us on a better and more sustainable path towards herd immunity. We expect COVID-19 vaccinations to be an annual programme, going forward, as this is the only way to making Lagos free of the virus.”

According to a statement by the bank, this would allow AMC countries to purchase doses beyond the fully donor-subsidised doses they are already receiving from COVAX.

COVAX plans to make available up to 430 million additional doses, or enough to fully vaccinate 250 million people, for delivery between late 2021 and mid-2022.

The scalable mechanism brings together COVAX’s ability to negotiate advance purchase agreements with vaccine manufacturers with the World Bank’s ability to provide predictable financing to countries for vaccine purchase, deployment and broader health systems investments.

Speaking about the mechanism, CEO, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Dr Seth Berkley, said, “This important and timely financing mechanism, made possible now by the World Bank and Gavi teaming up on the AMC cost-sharing arrangement, will allow COVAX to unlock additional doses for low- and middle-income countries.

“As we move beyond initial targets and work to support countries’ efforts to protect increasingly large portions of their populations, World Bank financing will help us advance further towards our goal of bringing COVID-19 under control.”

World Bank Group President, David Malpass, said, “Accessing vaccines remains the single greatest challenge that developing countries face in protecting their people from the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This mechanism will enable new supplies and allow countries to speed up the purchase of vaccines.

“It will also provide transparency about vaccine availability, prices, and delivery schedules. This is crucial information as governments implement their vaccination plans.”

The statement added that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank Group had deployed over $157bn to fight the health, economic, and social impacts of the pandemic, the fastest and largest crisis response in its history.

The bank is also supporting over 50 low- and middle-income countries, more than half of which are in Africa, with the purchase and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, and is making available additional $20bn in financing for this purpose until the end of 2022.

The Joe Biden administration had earlier promised to distribute 80 million doses from the US supply, with 25 million doses already allocated.

The allocation plan for the 55 million doses includes 41 million to be shared through COVAX, the global vaccine alliance; about 14 million of the vaccine doses will go to selected countries in Latin American and the Caribbean, 16 million in Asia, and 10 million in Africa.

Also 41 million doses will be shared to “regional priorities and other recipients” including Nigeria and about 30 other countries.

Five of those are South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Cape Verde and Egypt.

The Executive Director of the NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib, stated this while addressing reporters on Tuesday in Abuja.

“Recent research from Public Health England (PHE) shows that the Indian (Delta) variant B.1.617.2 is 92% susceptible to Oxford/AstraZeneca.

“It is, therefore, comforting to know that the vaccine used in Nigeria can protect against this variant that caused high morbidity and mortality in India. However, it underscores the need for us to ramp up our vaccination to more Nigerians,” Shuaib said.

Announcing the reopening of the administration of the first dose of the vaccine which takes effective from Tuesday, the NPHCDA boss noted that the vaccination for the first dose was officially closed on May 24 and appealed to persons of 18 years and above that were yet to take the jab to visit the nearest vaccination site for the first dose of the vaccine.

He explained that such persons would be due to receive their second dose of the jab in 12 weeks, noting that Nigeria would have received the next consignment of vaccines.

The NPHCDA boss said dedicated teams have continued to make strides in the vaccine rollout, working hand-in-hand with the local communities all across the country.

As of June 15, he revealed that the agency has administered 1,978,808 and 680,345 first and second doses of the vaccine respectively.

Shuaib called on all Nigerians who have received their first dose to check their vaccination cards for the date of their first dose.

He asked them to ensure that they receive the second dose between six and 12 weeks from the date they took the first dose, to gain full protection against the COVID-19 virus.

Director of WHO’s health emergencies programme, Mr Michael Ryan, disclosed this at a news conference on Tuesday.

“I think it will be very premature and unrealistic to think that we are going to finish with this virus by the end of the year.

“What we can finish with if we are smart is hospitalisations, deaths and the tragedy associated with this pandemic,” he said.

Ryan added that WHO’s focus at present was to keep transmissions as low as possible and vaccinate more and more people.

According to the official, delivery of vaccine doses has improved compared to 10 weeks ago, although there are `huge challenges’ in distributing them.

“If the vaccines begin to impact not only on death and hospitalisation, but have a significant impact on transmission dynamics and transmission risk, then I believe we will accelerate towards controlling this pandemic,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, Nigeria has received its first ever vaccines on Tuesday, as its confirmed COVID-19 cases hits 156,017.

WHO’s Chief Scientist, Soumya Swaminathan revealed this in an interview with DPA on Sunday.

According to him, COVID-19 vaccination was currently undergoing research processes and could be ready by the middle of next year.

“We have now over 20 candidates in clinical studies.

“So we are hopeful that a couple of them will work. It would be very unlucky if all of them fail.

“So if we are very practical, then we are looking at the middle of 2021 when we will have a vaccine that can be widely deployed.

“Of course, it’s impossible to predict,” she said.

The WHO official stated that the global race to develop a vaccine had been “the fastest timeline we have ever seen.”

Reca that COVID-19 was first discovered in Wuhan Province of China and has now spread throughout the globe.

Since its first outbreak, the virus has killed over 600, 000 people and infected over 14 million across the world.

Two volunteers were injected out of more than 800 people recruited for the study. Elisa Granato, a scientist, was the first volunteer to be injected and she said she volunteered because she wanted to try to support the scientific process.

Half of those who volunteered will receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and half a control vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus.
The design of the trial means volunteers will not know which vaccine they are getting, though doctors will.

Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute says “Personally I have a high degree of confidence in this vaccine, of course, we have to test it and get data from humans. We have to demonstrate it actually works and stops people getting infected with coronavirus before using the vaccine in the wider population”.
The Coronavirus vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus (known as an adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been modified so it cannot grow in humans, according to BBC.

Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed raised the alarm at the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) in Abuja on Tuesday April 21, and he said the yellowish vaccines being sold in Kano have not been certified.

Lai Mohammed said “The federal ministry of information and culture and its agencies have put up a public enlightenment and advocacy campaign to continue to reach Nigerians with information on how they can protect themselves and avoid contracting the disease. This is necessary because in the absence of any vaccine or drug, non-pharmaceutical intervention remains the most effective way to contain the spread of the disease and protect Nigerians. By the way, you must ignore the vaccine being hawked in Kano which is called COVID-19 vaccine. It’s yellow in colour. It is not certified by anybody; please don’t patronise the hawkers. The campaign has, therefore, continued to focus on the need for the populace to adhere strictly to social distancing and mass gathering restrictions. Wear face masks and ensure good personal hygiene.”