(Bloomberg) --

Nigeria plans to vaccinate as much as 40% of its population of 200 million against the coronavirus in 2021.

As a first step, Africa’s most populous country expects to get 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine at the end of January through the Covax initiative, Faisal Shuaib, chief executive officer of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said Thursday on Bloomberg TV. Those will be used to vaccinate mainly health care workers.

The country has secured the services of private sector players with ultra-cold storage facilities to help house and distribute the vaccines, Shuaib said. Africa’s largest economy plans to have at least 70% of the population vaccinated by the end of 2022, he said.

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