Dayo Ojerinde
A professor of Virology, Department of Virology, University of Ibadan, Prof. David Olaleye, has stressed the need for the Federal Government to consider storage facilities as key before determining the type of vaccine to be imported.
This, he stated, would guard against the effect of dispensing expired vaccines to the citizens.
Although he said that ingesting an expired vaccine may not have any direct health implication, the danger is in assuming wrongly that one has been vaccinated.
Olaleye said, “If the vaccine is degraded, it will not work. That is simple and that is for vaccines.
“For drugs, it is completely different and that is not what we are discussing at the moment. It may be poisonous or toxic for drugs, but for vaccines, most of the times, it may just not work.
“It means one has been given a false protection and it is very dangerous because one would be assuming wrongly.
“It is dangerous for someone to think he or she has been protected while still remaining unprotected.”
On the resumption of schools despite the increasing wave of infection and growing death, he said, “I said it before that it is a matter of a balance. It is a matter of a very delicate balance between what we have to do and the unfortunate situation of the pandemic.
“One basic fact is that this virus is not going to disappear overnight. The increasing rate of infection is an indication that this virus is widely adapted to human infection.
“Another fact is that respiratory viruses are very difficult to control because of the mode of spread.”
But the President, Nigerian Academy of Science, Prof. Motso Onuoha, advised Nigerians not to worry about the storage of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Onuoha said an existing cold chain system would take care of the storage of the vaccine.
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