- Counsels on Use of Face Shields
The shortest possible timeline for the development of any effective vaccine to combat the COVID-19 disease will be next year, according to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
The Centre also said that the development of most vaccines worldwide are known to have taken between five to 10 years adding that, the 2021 date being targeted by Nigeria is just an optimistic timeline.
Speaking during the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing on Thursday in Abuja, the Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, said, If Nigeria has a vaccine in 2021, it will be the fastest time ever for the development of a vaccine .
He said that, to have a vaccine in one hand a half years will be phenomenal emphasizing that the normal timeline for vaccine development have been between 5 to 10 years.
According to Ihekweazu, “don’t think that this is taking a lot of time; it is actually extremely quick to do the development, testing in animals and humans, testing for safety, then, building production capacity for a vaccine that you want to distribute to over 6 billion people in the world.”
Commenting on the use of face shields , he said its use is not sufficient to protect anyone from the infection of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, advising that though a lot of Nigerians are adopting its usage , but that it should not be used singly, but in addition with that face masks which have proven effective in protecting from the virus.
He said, “There has been an increasing use of face shields to protect you or the population from the transmission of COVID-19. I also like to advise that face shields are great but they should be used in addition to face masks and not in place of.
“I know we haven’t been clear on this and so we are doing that now. We are learning everyday and new technologies are emerging. The lack of evidence of effectiveness doesn’t mean that we will not ultimately find evidence of effectiveness. But from what we know at the moment, it is not sufficient to protect ourselves and the population. We can gradually over the next few days evolve out of the shields and back to masks.”
