The Nigeria Institute of Medical Research has said that there are not enough freezers in the country, to store the over 100,000 Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine it expects to receive later in the month.
Director-General of NIMR, Babatunde Salako made this known during a chat with Journalists, over the weekend.
He said while there are freezers suitable for storing the vaccines, they are occupied with other medical products that require low-temperature storage.
“Our facilities can hold Pfizer vaccines at -70 degrees but we don’t have enough of such freezers and the ones we have are even full at the moment. We even just got one that we have yet to install but how many samples can it even hold?” he stated.
“There are many -80 freezers around in the research institutes and universities but the point is that many of them have samples inside them. So, even if we evacuate, I don’t think we will all be able to do more than a few thousands,” he added.
He urged the Federal government to consider going for other vaccines which can be stored at higher temperatures.
