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South Africa extended tight COVID-19 rules on Sunday for another 14 days, maintaining restrictions that include a ban on gatherings, a curfew from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. and a prohibition on the sale of alcohol. The country, the worst-hit on the African continent in terms of recorded cases and deaths, is in the grip of a third wave of infections driven by the more infectious Delta coronavirus variant. “Our health system countrywide remains under pressure,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised address to the nation. Early this month South Africa recorded a new record of over 26,000 daily cases, stretching hospitals to breaking point. Ramaphosa moved the country to the fourth level of a five-tier restriction scale in late June as infections climbed, promising to review the restrictions af...
Moderna gave its mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine to the first set of volunteers in a clinical trial, the pharmaceutical company announced today. The start of the trial marks the next stage of the company’s work on this type of vaccine technology after the overwhelming success of its COVID-19 vaccine, which was built using the same strategy. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines were still largely experimental, even as they were heralded as the future of vaccine development. People who get an mRNA vaccine are injected with tiny snippets of genetic material from the target virus. Their cells use that genetic information to build bits of the virus, which the body’s immune system learns to fight against. The high efficacy of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTec...
Prof. Charles Igwe, the Vice-Chancellor of University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) has said that COVID-19 pandemic is arguably the most global challenge since world war II. Igwe said this in Nsukka on Monday during UNN 1st Annual International Conference titled: “A Whole New World; Research, Development and Innovation in the Pandemic Era.” He said that COVID-19 which has killed many people across the globe as well as infected many others has affected the economy, lives, people’s ways of living in virtually every country of the world. “COVID-19 pandemic is the most serious global challenge since the world war II the world has witnessed. “As this has affected the economy, people’s ways of life and behaviour of entire people of the world,” he said. He commended federal government on handling the ...
The executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, says 1,005,234 people have received the second dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Shuaib disclosed this on Thursday, during a media briefing in Abuja. He said the agency has extended the timeline for the administration of second dose by 11 days — from June 25 to July 5 — to enable more people to be vaccinated. He said those who received their first doses before May 13, can go to any centre to get the second dose. For those who have received the first dose, Shuaib said the figure now stands at 2,099,568. He added that the administration of the first dose is ongoing, and urged those who fall within the approved category to approach the designated centres to receive the vaccine...
British foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Friday there was no doubt some countries were using vaccines as a diplomatic tool to secure influence but Britain did not support so-called vaccine diplomacy. Raab was speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Cornwall, southwestern England, that was likely to be dominated by the West’s attempts to reassert its influence as the world looks to rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic. Western diplomats fear Russia and China are using their vaccines to gain influence across the world, especially in poorer countries that do not have their own production or the means to buy shots on the international market. Asked whether he was concerned that China and Russia could use vaccines in exchange for influence, Raab said: “There’s no doubt there’s...