Nigeria has become the latest country to require Civil Servants to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative test result in order to work.
A Presidential Steering Committee on the pandemic has ruled that unvaccinated Government workers will need to present a negative test result done within 72 hours before they are granted access to their offices across the country and its Embassies overseas.
Committee Chair, Boss Mustapha (pictured) said a Public Service-wide circular had been issued to guide officials on how to implement the process.
Nigeria has administered some five million vaccine doses to its 200 million citizens, and is in the midst of deploying millions more doses of Moderna and AstraZeneca shots, received through the COVAX vaccine scheme for developing countries.
It also has 1.12 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine that it purchased through an African Union program and is scheduled to receive 7.7 million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine via COVAX.
Nigeria has officially recorded 208,153 confirmed infections and 2,756 deaths from the virus.
However, these figures are thought to be conservative because of poor testing procedures.
In May, the Government banned travellers coming from some countries where COVID-19 was spreading rapidly.
Since then, the Presidential Committee has decided to remove South Africa, Turkey and Brazil from its restricted travel list following a review of developments in those countries.
Abuja, 15 October 2021
