Dr. Faisal Shuaib, the Executive Director of the National
Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) made the announcement on Tuesday at the national vaccines briefing
in Abuja.
He said it was developed by Sinopharm’s Beijing Institute of
Biological Products “sometimes written as Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological
Products,” resulting in the two different acronyms BBIBP and BIBP, for the same
vaccine.
“It completed phase 3 trials in Argentina, Bahrain, Egypt,
Morocco, Pakistan, Peru and United Arab Emirate (UAE), with over 60,000
participants. BBIBP-CorV shares, similar technology with CoronaVac and Covaxin,
other inactivated virus vaccines for COVID-19.
“Its product name is SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine ‘Vero Cell’ not to
be confused with the similar product name of CoronaVac,” said Shauib.
He added that the approval was recently granted by NAFDAC
and the vaccine had also received the World Health Organisation (WHO)
certification.
The NPHCDA boss said, “NAFDAC has approved Sinopharm
vaccine, the approval was done three days ago; and yes, Sinopharm vaccine has
also received WHO certification.
“So, it is a potential vaccine that we could use.
“There are so many vaccines out there, but one thing that we
are very clear about is that we are not going to use all the available vaccines
in Nigeria.
“At some point, we are going to draw a line in terms of the
number of vaccines we would use, so that we can keep a close watch on the
number of vaccines we are utilising in Nigeria,” he said.
The Moderna vaccines donated by the United State of America,
to step-up efforts to battle a third wave of infections in the country had been
deployed to 29 States.
The 29 states, out of the 36 states of the federation and
the FCT, were said to be prepared to receive the vaccines.
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