The Oyo Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) has said 75000 people in the state have been vaccinated against the virus in the first round of the vaccination exercise, with one person reporting serious effects from the vaccine and 398 others with mild symptoms such as a slight headache and pain at the injection site.
The Oyo EOC’s Co-lead on Risk Communication and Community Engagement Pillar, Dr Olusola Oriniowo, speaking at an interactive session with media on COVID-19 in the state.
He said 1000 people were sampled to find out how many developed adverse effects following vaccination.
According to him, 58 per cent of the sample size revealed that they had mild side effects with pain at the injection site the overwhelming majority.
Dr Oriniowo, noting that there was underreporting of cases of side effects of the vaccine in Oyo State, said individuals are expected to report any symptom they notice after receiving the vaccine to be able to access correct advice and medical care on how to manage said side effects.
Incident Manager, Oyo State COVID-19 Emergency Operation Centre, Dr Taiwo Ladipo, said the influx of people from countries with a high burden of COVID-19 cases and apathy towards COVID-19 testing is of concern to the EOC and urged cooperation of individuals in the community to ensure that suspected cases get tested and treated.
According to Dr Ladipo, “even when we test minimally, we might just have a single case and it is something that is giving us concern because it shows that we have not mopped it up in our society. Unfortunately, most of the testing is incidentally because some people want to travel abroad.”
“So, we have more cases coming in from private laboratories that are doing the test for international travels and that tells us that we are still in the woods. The situation we are in even portends danger because although we think that there are few cases, we could have some with new variants of COVID-19 causing calamity in other climes.”
Dr Ladipo said the number of people vaccinated in Oyo state is still low and not enough to ensure herd immunity and urged everyone to get set to be vaccinated during the next round of COVID -19 vaccination exercise in the state.
Mrs. Titilope Akinleye, Oyo State Disease Surveillance and Notification Officer asked the media to debunk untrue and unverified information on COVID-19, sensitize the public on the need to keep to the preventive measures and be tested for COVID-19.
