Regina Otokpa, 
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), has stressed the need for the country to ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations,in order to track social and economic recovery.
Executive Director NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, who made the disclosure on Friday at the National flag off of COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign in Abuja, maintained that out of the six million Nigerians thus vaccinated, nine has died as a result of taking the jab.
He said: “What this is telling us is that all the conspiracy theories are false and have just been crafted to distract us and undermine the global effort to protect people against COVID-19 outbreak.
“As of this morning, Friday November 19, 2021, the total number of eligible persons who have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria is 5,989,480 which represents only 5.4% of our eligible population. A total of 3,341,094 have received their second dose and are fully vaccinated and this represents only 3% of our eligible.
“We are concerned about Nigerians that have refused to come out for the vaccination exercise especially as the Federal Government is fulfilling its commitment to providing the COVID-19 vaccines free of charge to all Nigerians.
“Field reports, scientific information and lessons learnt from phases 1 and 2 implementation suggest that we need to ramp up vaccination in order to fast track Nigeria’s social and economic recovery. Mass vaccination is one of our strategic approaches to rapidly increase the number of fully vaccinated eligible populations in Nigeria.
“To this end, a national strategy known as the S.C.A.L.E.S for intensification of COVID-19 vaccination has been developed for adaptation by state health teams across the country. SCALES stands for Service delivery, Communication, Accountability, Logistics, Emid (Electronic Management of Immunization Data) and Supervision.”
Secretary to Government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha, noted that Nigeria was far from achieving the national target of vaccinating 70 percent of eligible target population to move Nigeria towards attaining herd immunity by 2022.
