Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun has taken his first dose of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
The governor took the vaccine at the Governor’s office in Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, the state capital.
His deputy, Noimot Salako-Oyedele, and two frontline health workers were also administered the vaccine.
The governor after taking the vaccine said, “Taking our doses is, first, service to self then to people, because we can only silence the virus if we think and act together. We should be aware that even our two doses don’t preclude the use of facemasks and compliance with other safety guidelines.”
The governor, therefore, urged everyone all to make themselves available to take the vaccine, especially those prioritised by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) on basis of profession, age, or other criteria.
Ogun State government had earlier on Monday evening took delivery of 50,000 doses of the first batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Governor Abiodun received the vaccines and gave an assurance that the vaccines would be deployed immediately across the 236 wards of the 20 local governments of the state.
Ogun State is the first to receive the first batch of vaccines among the comity of states in the country.
Amid the rising figure of confirmed cases of COVID-19, the fight against the outbreak received a major boost on Tuesday last week as Nigeria took delivery of its first batch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX, a World Health Organisation (WHO)-backed initiative set up to procure and ensure equitable distribution of vaccines for free among countries across the world.
The first shipment of 3,924,000 doses of the vaccines arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja via an Emirates airplane from India.