WHO Didn't Delist Nigeria From Receiving Vaccines

Dina Faisal

Health

14th February 2021

WHO Didn't Delist Nigeria From Receiving Vaccines

A statement was never made (Getty).

The Claim

The WHO has delisted or disqualified Nigeria from receiving vaccines against COVID-19.

News posted on

Emerging story

Circulating posts on social media that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has delisted Nigeria from receiving Covid-19 vaccines, while some news sources share that the WHO has disqualified them from receiving Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines.

The claim stems from a WHO press briefing on 4 February where Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said that countries had been invited to submit proposals to receive a limited amount of the first batch of Pfizer-Biotech vaccine.

The proposals were evaluated according to criteria such as current mortality rates, new cases, and trends, and ability to store the vaccine at the required low temperature -70 degrees celsius.

While 13 countries had applied only 4 were approved, they are Cabo Verde, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tunisia and will receive Approximately 320,000 doses of Pfizer-Biotech vaccine. Nigeria was not one of the countries selected.

Misbar’s Analysis

Misbar investigations found that although Nigeria was not selected to receive the first patch of Pfizer-Biotech vaccine due to not meeting some of the criteria they have not been delisted nor disqualified from receiving vaccines.

Media reports interpreted the statement to mean that Nigeria had been disqualified from receiving vaccines, however as per the press briefing and its transcripts, such a statement was never made.

A few days after the news spread, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, which will be responsible for deploying vaccines in Nigeria posted that the news was fake.

Moreover, a tweet posted by Dr. Walter Mulombo Kazadi, Nigeria representative for WHO, where he said they could “never disqualify a Member State from accessing an approved vaccine for their population”.

Nigeria is still eligible for vaccines in the future and is expecting a shipment of AstraZeneca later this month. A summary of the COVAX’s interim vaccine rollout shows all participants of the program, which includes Nigeria with an indicative distribution of 16,008,000 doses.

The Health Minister of Nigeria Osagie Ehanire told the nation at a public briefing that the country is expecting 58 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses in total. Taking everything into account, the Misbar team concludes the claims as fake.