Nigeria Seeks 30 Million Doses of J&J Vaccine From African Union

(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria plans to get 29.6 million doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccine through the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust led by Afreximbank, the finance ministry said.

The government is working on a supplementary budget to cover vaccine procurement and delivery, Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed said in a statement on Friday. Already, 29 billion naira has been released for the deployment of vaccines, which is 52% of what is required from 2021 to 2022, she said.

Africa’s most populous country of about 200 million people has set a target of vaccinating 70% of its citizens who are 18 years and above between this year and next, Ahmed said. The vaccine commitment through the COVAX initiative would cover 43.1 million of the country’s population.

Nigeria received about 4 million doses of a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford in March with about 1.3 million people getting their first doses as of March 6.

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