…as new COVID-19 variant IHU, Deltacron,BA.2 invade France, Cyprus
By Joyce Remi- Babayeju
Owing to the increase and spike COVID-19 infections over the festive period both locally and globally, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, said it would integrate COVID-19 vaccination with the routine childhood vaccination at the Primary Health Care, PHC.
Executive Director of NPHCDA, Dr. Shuaib said, “We would also like to inform the general public that in this phase of COVID-19 mass vaccination we plan to integrate the campaign with childhood immunization and other PHC services.”
“What this simply means is that alongside the COVID-19 vaccines, childhood vaccines will also be available at COVID-19 vaccination sites.”
He therefore urged parents or guardians with children aged zero to 23 months are urged to take them along to the vaccination sites.
He stressed that the routine childhood vaccines protect against polio, whooping cough, measles, yellow fever, tetanus, tuberculosis, and other childhood preventable diseases.
He explained, “This is to ensure that while we are trying so hard to control the transmission of COVID-19, we do not neglect other PHC services or even have outbreaks of childhood vaccine preventable diseases on our hands.”
The ED urged Nigerians to visit vaccination sites or health centres nearest to them with their zero to 23 months old children for vaccination against COVID-19 and childhood vaccine- preventable.
Meanwhile, Shuaib informed that there are global COVID-19 new variants with mutants spiking new infections.
He said,” Globally we saw the emergence of new variiants such as the IHU variant in France which is said to have 46 mutants, Dektacron in Cyprus and the Omicron variant still being highly infectious with the BA.2 subvariant rapidly spreading.”
The reason for the emergence of these variants, is because there is still a large proportion of the eligible population who have not yet been vaccinated and this has given the virus time to mutate and fight back, he explained.
We call on Nigerians to avail themselves of the opportunity in the on-going mass vaccination exercise to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Shuaib appealed to Nigerians.
