LUTH flags off COVID-19 vaccination of health workers, conducts 15,000 tests

Prioritising frontline health workers, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) has started administering COVID-19 vaccine on frontline health workers.

Chief Medical Director, LUTH, Prof. Chris Bode, who was the first to be vaccinated alongside the Provost, College of Medicine, LUTH, David Oke, said the availability of the vaccine is the starting point to ending the pandemic in the state.

He noted that within one year, the hospital had treated 890 COIVD-19 patients and conducted 15,000 tests. He added that all staff on the pay roll of the hospital would get the vaccine. He also appreciated every department of the hospital for their role in curbing the spread of the pandemic.

“As predicted, more than 100 staff contracted the virus from the community and thus the importance of the vaccine and very few, less than five contracted it from contact with patients who they were not aware had the virus,” he added.

According to him, the vaccine had taken a lot of resources and effort to be produced and transported to Nigeria. He also called on all Nigerians to register and take the vaccines as it would save lives and put an end to the pandemic.

Bode, who was the first along with provost to take the vaccine, noted that there was no ulterior motive to the vaccine than eradicating the pandemic.

Explaining why the vaccine was made within a short time, he said: “100 years ago, a similar experience occurred, so scientists were not ignorant of such cases. Some advanced countries had already prepared for such scenarios. They already had on the scientific shelf the ingredients for this kind of eventuality. We should commend that instead of condemning it. The vaccine went through all the scientific process and testing until it was approved,” Bode said.

On the reports on the suspension of the vaccines in the EU, he noted that it was an over abundance of caution that led to that decision, adding that the decision is seen as more political that scientific.

Oke cautioned that citizens should not throw away their universal health precautions like social distancing, after getting the vaccines until immunity to the virus is acquired which is when at least 70 per cent of the population would have been vaccinated.

He stressed on the need for citizens to play their part towards eradication of the pandemic, especially in market places.