The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, (NAFDAC) on Friday announced the approval of Pfizer-BionTech COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in Nigeria.
NAFDAC Director-General, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, made this announcement in Lagos.
According to Adeyeye, NAFDAC has only certified Pfizer-BionTech for emergency use, while adding that a full approval would be given after many people have been vaccinated and data about the adverse effects following immunisation, have been gathered and examined.
The NAFDAC boss disclosed that the emergency approval was given based on the investigation by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The WHO had approved the Pfizer-BionTech for emergency use.
In her words, “The purpose of the press briefing is to announce that NAFDAC has just approved Pfizer-BionTech vaccines for possible use in Nigeria.
“They were reviewed carefully by the NAFDAC staff COVID-19 vaccine committee to make sure that the science behind the development is well understood and in accord with our world regulatory activities.
“We used different mechanisms to approve the vaccine. We used reliance, meaning that a more mature regulatory agency across the globe, we can use that as a basis for our review.
“We will get the assessment report, know the peculiarity there, then our COVID-19 committee will get to do their job.”
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed by BioNTech, a German Company in conjuction with Pfizer, an American Company.
Recall that NAFDAC had approved AstraZeneca vaccine for use in Nigeria.
Similarly, Nigerian had received a total of 3.94 million doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine.
According to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), 1, 191,563 Nigerians have been vaccinated in the ongoing phase 1 of vaccine administration, as of April 28.
According to statistics by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control(NCDC), 165,055 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in the country, with 2063 fatalities, as of Thursday.
