Why Gov Ayade hasn’t taken COVID-19 vaccine —Aide

 

The Cross River State Commissioner for Health, Dr Betta Edu, has explained why the state Governor, Prof Ben Ayade, was not among the first people that received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine as is the case in other states where governors and their deputies were among the first group of people to take the vaccine.

She said it is because frontline health workers, according to guidelines, were supposed to be the first set of people to take it and that the governor had been away in Abuja.

According to her, “At the national level, when the vaccine came into Nigeria, it was not the president that took first. It was not the vice president. It was health workers at the National Hospital and the nurse from the isolation centre. These were the first set of people that took.

“It was some days after that the president and vice president had theirs.”

Edu said the training of health workers at the local government level for the vaccination exercise would end on Thursday, while the actual vaccination began in Calabar metropolis on Wednesday.

The state had received 53,840 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, March 10 and the following day, the vaccination flag off event took place at Dr Lawrence Henshaw Infectious Disease Hospital in Calabar with the vaccination of frontline workers.