As the World continue the battle to overcome the COVID-19 Pandemic through vaccination and adhering to other preventive health protocols, Nigerians have been admonished to go for vaccination against the virus in order to attain herd immunity and decimate the dreaded disease the same way the poliomyelitis was completely wiped out at some point.

This admonition came from Dr. Mbwas Mashor, a Public Health Policy Manager, Consultant Pathologist with Bingham University Teaching Hospital who is also the Financial Secretary of the Nigerian Medical Association Plateau State Chapter during a COVID-19 Public Awareness Radio Programme sponsored by Centre for Information Technology And Development (CITAD) and MacArthur Foundation Today on KT 103.9 FM Jos, Plateau State.
The Public Health Expert while speaking on the topic “why COVID-19 Vaccines are safe and effective” underscored the need for the public to be vaccinated against the virus in order to completely wipe same.

According to him, COVID-19 has done so much harm and the need to confront and overcome it cannot be overstressed.
He hinted that all the COVID-19 Vaccines are safe, very efficacious and administered free to the Citizens free in Nigeria.
He described the rumours and misinformation that the vaccines cause impotency, stunted growth and are dangerous to the body cells as fallacious and not proven as they have gone through series of clinical trial and certified by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be safe for both emergency and full use.
He disclosed that the virus keeps replicating and mutating giving rise to more different variants with more severe outcomes which must be properly managed.
He said the vaccines are meant to help the body system produce antibodies that fights foreign elements in the body thereby building immunity against diseases. He said the more people being vaccinated the better the ability to overcome the virus through the attainment of herd immunity.

On how fast the COVID-19 Vaccines were developed, Dr. Mbwas said “vaccine production do take up to 30 Months but for COVID-19 Vaccine, because of the urgency that is needed and the lives that were lost especially at the beginning of the pandemic there was the need to accelerate the production which made the stages to be shortened to six Months” he said.

He hinted that at any stage of clinical trial, the safety and efficacy of the vaccines administered on human beings are assessed. He stressed that adequate monitoring of the COVID-19 Vaccines safety and effectiveness was carried out and they were certified good for human use.
He further said the vaccine production processes were reviewed by global health Experts and agencies especially the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) which certified the safety and efficacy.
“The vaccines have been safe so far following the clinical trials that means it has been safe for a group of people, for a larger number before it was tried and approved for the general population.
“The safety margin is very okay” he hinted.

He urged the public to discountenance fake news, conspiracy theories and get vaccinated to develop immunity against the virus.

He gave figures of confirmed cases in Plateau State to be 10,255 of the 256,227 nationwide, with 75 Deaths of the 3,143 deaths recorded nationally as at Wednesday 8th June, 2022.

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Health Expert, Dr. Mbwas Mashor Calls For Increased Vaccine Uptake to Decimate COVID-19