Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has come out to say that the state might start the administering of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, March 11.

Sanwo-Olu recently revealed this when the World Health Organization (WHO) representative to Nigeria, Dr Walter Mulombo paid a courtesy visit to the Governor at Lagos House, Ikeja.

According to him, the Federal Government has given the state a total of 507,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, and plans are in place to begin administering as soon as possible.

He added that he is very grateful to FG for the number of vaccines received, even if he’ll appreciate a lot more.

His words, “We are truly grateful that they (Federal Government) can give us that number. We want a lot more.”

“We have the Vaccine Steering Committee that we have put in place, which has both the private sector and public sector practitioners.”

”They have designed a robust vaccine implementation strategy, and identified the various levels of our citizens and what order we are going to be administering the doses that we have.”

”With all of that now and working with the Primary Health Board at the state level, we will start administering it, maybe from tomorrow (Thursday) or as they planned.”

”We have a robust process that shows we are ready and capable to administer those things in the days, weeks and months ahead.”

”We need to explain to our citizens and help them see that indeed, the vaccine is needed, helpful and will help the level of resistance, especially the first-line health workers, those with underlining health issues and the senior citizens among us.”

”The whole idea is that you will not wait for the problem to come. You anticipate the problem and build the capacity so that when it finally comes, you have the response.”

”Now the second wave appears to have flattened, we are watching. We are not stopping at the level of tests that we need to conduct; we still have isolation centres that need to be treated.”

”We still have oxygen cylinders that we procured, and drugs in stock; we bought everything that we needed to buy because we feel that it is a public health issue and we are facing it frontally.”