The National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) on Friday said since the COVID-19 vaccination programme was officially rolled out on March 15, 2021 in Nigeria, 8,439 mild Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFI) had been reported.

It also said 52 cases of moderate to severe incidents of AEFI had been reported.

The executive director of NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib, who disclosed this at a press briefing on vaccination update in Abuja, noted that five states currently have the highest records of AEFI namely: Kaduna (970) Cross River (859), Yobe (541), Kebbi (511) and Lagos (448).

He said mild AEFI range from pain, swelling at the site of inoculation to body pains and nausea while moderate to severe incidents of AEFI presented as fever, vomiting, diarrhoea headache, dizziness and allergic reactions.

Shuaib however said no case of blood clot had been diagnosed and no death had been recorded from administration of the vaccine in the country.

Speaking further, the he noted that about 16,900 doses of Astrazeneca vaccines were delivered to the states and they had since launched their COVID-19 vaccination programmes.

"As of today, April 16, 1,071,346 representing 53.2 per cent of the eligible persons targeted with the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered with their first dose in this vaccination phase.

"It is important to note that these data are based on reports received from states through the Electronic Management of Immunization Data (EMID) system only and do not take into account vaccinations that are not yet captured in the system.

"What this number means is that these are the people who have their information already uploaded on our data base, while others are awaiting upload, potentially due to network problems and the high traffic of those coming in to take their shots at the same time.

"While we continue to optimize our registration and immunisation data system, we also encourage the state teams to deploy the most suitable internet service for their locations in order to speed up the data entry process, so that we can have the actual number of vaccinated people at any given time," he added.

Copyright Leadership. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com)., source News Service English