In a bid to stop a surge in cases during the Christmas travel season and wary of the emergence of new variants, Nigeria is turning to religious leaders, churches and mosques to push a mass vaccination campaign.
Those worries will likely deepen after the country yesterday, reported its first cases of the Omicron variant that has prompted new travel bans. The nation has so far mostly escaped the brunt of the global pandemic that ravaged Europe and elsewhere after coronavirus emerged in December 2019.
Recorded cases are low around 214,000 registered infections and just under 3,000 deaths since the pandemic began although that is likely partly due to low testing rates. But the country has fully vaccinated only 3.5 million people and given 6.5 million one-shot far off a target of inoculating around 112 million, or 70% of the adult population, by the end of next year.
For a religious society like Nigeria, churches and mosques have in the past proven effective in mobilising sceptical communities to get vaccinated as they were with a polio campaign a decade ago. In some wealthy nations, three-quarters or more of the adult population have had two doses and a campaign is underway for a third booster jab. But as in most developing economies, the rate in Nigeria is much lower and vaccine hesitancy is common.
But vaccine availability is also an issue. The global vaccine-sharing system Covax, led by the WHO, is providing low- and middle-income nations with doses financed by wealthier States. However, Covax and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention together warned this week that donations to Africa were often ad-hoc, at short notice and with short shelf lives, and this made planning tough.
Nigeria has received around 30 million doses so far, with another 60 million on their way early next year.
