The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has approved the use of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria.
NAFDAC’s Director-General, Mojisola Adeyeye made the announcement during a media briefing in Abuja on Friday April 30.
Adeyeye said the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine will be used in emergency cases only. She added that the approval given was not a full one but would be in effect within the period of getting people vaccinated and gathering data about the adverse effects following immunisation.
The NAFDAC DG said;
“The purpose of the press briefing is to announce that NAFDAC has just approved Pfizer-BionTech vaccines for possible use in Nigeria.
“They were reviewed carefully by the NAFDAC staff COVID-19 vaccine committee to make sure that the science behind the development is well understood and in accord with our world regulatory activities.
“We used different mechanisms to approve the vaccine. We used reliance, meaning that a more mature regulatory agency across the globe, we can use that as a basis for our review.
“We will get the assessment report, know the peculiarity there, then our COVID-19 committee will get to do their job.”
This is coming two months after the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the country was approved by the agency.
