From Sylvanus Viashima, Jalingo
Taraba State Governor Darius Ishaku on Monday said the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine being rolled out in the country is safe and protects against the novel coronavirus.
Governor Ishaku disclosed this shortly after receiving his jab of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the flagging off ceremony in Jalingo.
‘From my findings, the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is safe and 79 per cent protective [against] the virus. I have just taken my jab and I want to urge all the residents of the state to also do so, as they say, “prevention is better than cure”. Thousands of people have already received the vaccine in the country, including President Muhammadu Buhari, but there no serious incidents of note in terns of side effects,’ the governor said.
Earlier, Dr Innocent Vakkai, Taraba Commissioner for Health, had said at the event that the roll out of the vaccine was a commendable effort toward tackling the virus in the state.
He noted that the benefits of taking the AstraZeneca vaccine have been found to outweigh the side effects that are discovered with some few persons in other countries.
Alhaji Jauro Hasssn, the Executive Secretary, Taraba Primary Health Care Development Agency, noted at the occasion that the vaccination would go in 78 centres across the 168 council wards of the state.
Speaker of the House of Assembly Dr Joseph Albasu Kunini also received his jab immediately after the governor at the event.
