The Federal Government has set 2022 as the target year to end the COVID-19 pandemic, announcing plans to convene a national summit next month to review targets set on the pandemic.
It also lamented the continued increase in the COVID-19 case fatality ratio, blaming it on vaccine hesitancy, late presentation of cases, and other factors.
Nigeria has lost nearly 3,000 people to the pandemic, but the government said but for poor record-keeping, especially in rural areas, the figure was definitely higher.
Chairman, Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 PSC and Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Mr Boss Mustapha, who disclosed this during yesterday’s briefing of the committee, said: “The PSC is approaching the end of its nine months mandate by the end of December 2021.
‘’To effectively capture the core elements of our national response, a national summit to end COVID-19 in 2022 and to strengthen global health security is being planned to hold in Abuja from December 6-8, 2021.
‘’It is imperative that all hands must be on deck if we must lay a solid foundation for a sustainable response to COVID which will be with us for quite some time; and continue to push to minimize the impact on health and economic sectors.
Case fatality ratio
“We are currently seeing some surges in cases in some countries in Europe (especially eastern Europe) due to under vaccination. In other territories where massive vaccinations have occurred, the infections are rising.
‘’What we see in Nigeria right now is that there is an increase in case fatality ratio, which calls for great concern.
“In our last briefing, we announced the Vaccine Mandate for December 1, 2021. I will like to state that this is in the best interest of Nigeria, looking at what is happening globally. We are gearing up to further engage with the Nigerian Governors’ Forum to push through the mass vaccination programme and mandate for our citizens.
“We have received intelligence and even detected that some unscrupulous citizens are procuring vaccination cards through the black market. Let me assure everyone that the vaccination records/certificates will be verified and this should serve as a warning to those criminally-minded persons to desist because they will be prosecuted accordingly.’’
He said the vaccination phase was being accelerated, adding that the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, had concluded arrangements to roll out a mass vaccination plan this week.
“The PSC wishes to assure Nigerians that the NPHCDA has enough vaccines in the pipeline to vaccinate about 50% of the target population by the end of January 2022. Efforts are also ongoing to bring on board the booster dose to build a healthy level of anti-bodies,” the SGF added.
