The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has given endorsement to the use of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria.
NAFDAC disclosed this at a press briefing, stating that two weeks after receiving the dossier of the vaccine, the safety committee went to work immediately to evaluate the vaccine safety and efficacy for Nigerians.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, also known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, or AZD1222, is a viral vector vaccine.
Scientists used an adenovirus, originally derived from chimpanzees, and modified it with the aim of training the immune system to mount a strong response against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19).
The vaccine can be stored at 2-8℃ (in a normal refrigerator) which distinguished it from some of the other COVID-19 vaccines such as Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine.
NAFDAC’s endorsement of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine came after a team of scientists at the University of Edinburgh said B1525 variant of the virus whose earliest sequences were dated to December and found in Nigeria could be vaccine-resistant.
The variant is said to contain the E484K mutation and first found in Nigeria in December 2020, which is present in the virus variants found in South Africa and Brazil.
