The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control on Friday officially approved the use of the Pfizer-BionTech COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in Nigeria.

This was disclosed by NAFDAC Director-General, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye at the head office of the agency in Isolo, Lagos.

Adeyeye, however, cautioned that the approval given was not a full one.

She emphasised that Pfizer vaccine was carefully reviewed by the NAFDAC staff COVID-19 vaccine committee to ensure that the science behind the development is well understood.

The NAFDAC boss also revealed that the agency relied on a more mature regulatory body for its approval, adding that that the agency was at liberty to review its stance since the World Health Organisation had given emergency use listing.

“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,” she said.

Recall that NAFDAC had previously approved the use of AstraZeneca vaccine for use in the country.

Nigeria commenced its vaccination programme against the novel coronavirus last month with 3.924m doses of AstraZeneca vaccine doses.

Last week, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency disclosed that over one million doses of the vaccine have so far been administered across the country in the first phase of the vaccination programme.

PUNCH also reported that over 160,000 COVID-19 infections and more than 2,000 associated deaths have been recorded in the country in the last one year, according to statistics by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.