Nigeria to bar unvaccinated civil servants from offices

ABUJA - Authorities in Nigeria have announced that government workers who have not received Covid-19 jabs will not be allowed into their offices from December.

This effectively makes covid vaccines mandatory for federal civil servants across the country - a policy the government has been considering for several months.

Chairman of the Presidential Steering Committee on Covid-19 Boss Mustapha said proof of a negative Covid test done within 72 hours will be the only other option for government employees.

The government has not made any mention of visitors to its offices.

Nigeria has so far fully vaccinated just one percent of its population of more than 200 million.

Inadequate vaccine doses and hesitancy by the citizens are blamed for the low vaccination rate. But millions of doses it has received in recent months through the Covax facility are expected to boost the vaccination campaign.

In Italy, the government will require all workers to show a coronavirus health pass from today, one of the world's toughest anti-Covid regimes that has already sparked riots and which many fear will cause "chaos."

More than 85 percent of Italians over the age of 12 have received at least one shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, making them eligible for the so-called Green Pass certificate.

But according to various estimates, about 2.5 million of the country's 23 million workers are unvaccinated, and risk being denied access to the workplace.

"You have no idea of the chaos that we will have in firms," the president of the heavily industrialised northern Veneto region, Luca Zaia, said recently.

Unvaccinated workers can still get a Green Pass by getting tested for coronavirus or with a certificate of recovery, if they contracted the virus within the previous six months.