Nigeria received four million doses of the Moderna vaccine against the coronavirus from the United States this Sunday, when the West African giant is going through a third wave. The doses were flown to the airport in Abuja, the capital of the country of 200 million people. This is the second batch of vaccines destined for Nigeria, after the first four million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, received in March as part of the Covax program, intended to supply vaccines to low-income countries.
Covid-19 has killed 2,149 people and infected nearly 174,000 people in Nigeria since the start of 2020, according to an official census. But these figures are underestimated, the number of tests carried out being low. In July, the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) said it had detected the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus, which put authorities on high alert.
In June, Nigeria banned entry to the country to passengers who are not citizens or permanent residents, having stayed in South Africa in the past 14 days. Similar restrictions had already been imposed on travelers from Brazil, India and Turkey.