Katsina Receives 92,370 Doses of Moderna Vaccine

The Katsina State Government has received 92,370 doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the Executive Secretary, Katsina State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Shamsuddeen Yahaya, has said.Yahaya in statement said that the vaccines would be to the 34 Local Government Areas of the state.He said the vaccine was received by the state Commissioner Foe Health, Yakubu Nuhu and other government officials.”The Moderna vaccine will be used for the second phase of the COVID-19) vaccination which will be administered to people 18 years and above.”The first phase of the vaccination, which was the Astrazeneca vaccine, was administered to only health workers, frontline health workers and also strategic leaders.“We begun training of health workers who will conduct the exercise which hopefully will start next week.” Yahaya said.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that on Aug. 2, Nigeria received four million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from the U.S.The doses, which arrived on two planes on Sunday, were received by UNICEF officials on behalf of Nigeria at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.The delivery was the second batch of vaccines to arrive in Nigeria after four million doses were delivered in March under the COVAX vaccine sharing Facility.COVAX was set up to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines, particularly to low-income countries, and has already delivered more than 80 million doses to 129 territories.Nigeria has since exhausted the four million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to kick off its nationwide inoculation programme.The Moderna vaccine is mRNA type of vaccine manufactured and developed by Moderna, NIAID.Two shots of the vaccine are administered through intramuscular injection, 28 days apart.The Moderna vaccine has been listed for emergency use by the World Health Organisation, WHO, and approved by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control as safe and effective based on data from large-scale clinical trials.In June, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, reported the first case of the highly contagious Delta variant putting the nation on alert for a third wave of infections in the country.(NAN)