Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu yesterday launched a mass vaccination campaign as part of strategies to ward off a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ‘Operation Count Me in 4 Million Lagosians Vaccinated against COVID-19’ hopes to fulfill its mandate before the yuletide. It was launched with a symbolic event at the Civic Centre in Victoria Island and it is being undertaken by the government in collaboration with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).
According to Sanwo-Olu, the mass vaccination campaign would help bolster the state’s response to emerging threats posed by the pandemic.
He said the joint committee set up by the state and NPHCDA to oversee the campaign implementation would be opening vaccination sites in high traffic locations as part of strategies to expand vaccine access in underserved communities. Mobile vans, the governor added, would be deployed to move round boundary settlements to reach individuals in areas with limited access to health facilities.
He said: “There is a potential for the fourth wave of COVID-19 as our borders would be opened to all people in December. To prevent the catastrophic events we witnessed in the previous waves, the state has developed a robust vaccination drive, leveraging on both the strengths we have in the public and private sectors of our healthcare system. In development of our strategy and counter-measures, we prioritise the protection of human lives and keeping our economy open for business.
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“To mitigate this potential damage, and accelerate efforts towards herd immunity, the need for a different strategy became a front-burner issue. This is what has culminated in the ‘Count Me In 4 million Lagosians Vaccinated against COVID-19’ campaign, targetting the full vaccination of four million Lagos residents before the end of December 2021. Once achieved, this will bring the state closer to reaching our promise to vaccinate 30 per cent of our population within one year.
“We have set up vaccination points in all our 205 public primary health centres, 14 of the state’s second and tertiary hospitals, and we are hoping this partnership can be implemented in over 400 private health centres across seven underserved local government areas.
“Let me re-emphasise that we are not compelling anyone to get vaccinated. But we want everyone to take it as a personal responsibility, which is highly important. What we seek to achieve by this campaign is to ensure there is access to the vaccines and availability. Then, give people an opportunity to get vaccinated at centres close to them. This will give nobody a reason not to get the vaccines.”
Since vaccination started in March, 800,000 residents have gotten the first dose of Moderna vaccine and 310,000 persons fully vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
This, the governor said, makes the total number of residents vaccinated with the first dose of either AstraZeneca or Moderna 1.2 million, while raising the number of fully vaccinated individuals to 550,000, which accounts for about four per cent of the state’s population.
Commissioner for Health Prof. Akin Abayomi described the vaccination campaign as ‘ambitious’. He said the state has, by this measure, ensured a two-pronged approach to prevent a fourth wave.
NPHCDA Executive Director Dr. Shuaib Faisal said only 2,950,232 Nigerians have been fully vaccinated, which is a far cry from reaching the target number for herd immunity.
“We have enough vaccines in storage to give many people the opportunity to get vaccinated. We now have the jabs, but we now need the arms,” he added.
The campaign kicked off with the symbolic vaccination of Mr. Okeke Onyeama, a private security guard, who was inoculated in the presence of the governor and the NPHCDA boss.