Vaccine
Minister: When Nigeria receives coronavirus vaccines doesn’t lie in our hands
Since the beginning of January 2021, Nigeria has been expecting the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, but nothing has happened to date. The World Health Organisation, WHO and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, CEPI, came up with the COVAX initiative to ensure that low and middle-income countries have access to vaccines. But COVAX has not given a precise date for when it will begin distributing the vaccines. Nigeria has put all its hopes on the COVAX Facility. The federal government is also expecting some vaccines from the Africa Union arrangement, expected to deploy from March. This development has attracted criticisms about the government’s readiness and commitment towards ensuring the timely vaccination of Nigerians against the dreaded pande...
Australia premier vaccinated as rollout begins
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has received the coronavirus vaccine as the country prepares to start inoculations this week. His jab was televised on Sunday in order to help boost confidence in the vaccine rollout across Australia. Vaccinations officially begin on Monday and at least 60,000 doses are expected to be administered next week. On Saturday, small crowds of anti-vaccination demonstrators gathered to protest against the launch. Mr Morrison was part of a small group of people vaccinated on Sunday along with some frontline health workers and care home residents. Australia’s chief nurse Professor Alison McMillan and Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly were also immunised. Speaking at ahead of his vaccination, Mr Morrison said: “Tomorrow our vaccination programme star...
WTO: We need to build capacity for international competitiveness – LCCI
Lagos Chamber of Commerce & Industry The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has posited that for Nigeria to take advantage of opportunities offered by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) under the leadership of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, it was important to build capacity for international competitiveness of our products and services. The Chamber also emphasised the need to address trade facilitation issues, especially around port processes, ports infrastructures, international trade documentation, foreign exchange policies, trade policies and industrial policies. The Director General of the chamber, Muda Yusuf, made the disclosure following the appointment of Okonjo-Iweala as the DG of the WTO, saying her emergence comes at a time when the global trading system is faced with n...
Israel plans to reopen restaurants in March, restart tourism with Cyprus
Israel plans to reopen restaurants around March 9 and restart tourism with Cyprus as part of a gradual return to normality thanks to a COVID-19 vaccination campaign, officials said on Sunday. With more than 41% of Israelis having received at least one shot of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine, Israel has said it will partially reopen hotels and gyms on Feb. 23 to those fully inoculated or deemed immune after recovering from COVID-19. To gain entry, these beneficiaries would have to present a “Green Pass”, displayed on a Health Ministry app linked to their medical files. The app’s rollout is due this week. Nachman Ash, the national pandemic-response coordinator, said the reopening of hotel dining rooms, restaurants and cafes would happen “around March 9”. “We want to open gradually, carefully so we don’...
Iran’s president warns of coronavirus ‘fourth wave’
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani warned Saturday of a Covid-19 “fourth wave” as cases rise in certain areas of the Middle Eastern country hardest hit by the pandemic. “This is a warning for all of us,” Rouhani said in televised remarks. He said some cities in the southwestern province of Khuzestan were now “red” — the highest on Iran’s colour-coded risk level — after weeks of low alert levels across the country. “This means the beginning of moving towards the fourth wave. We all have to be vigilant to prevent this,” Rouhani added. The country of more than 80 million people has lost close to 59,000 lives out of more than 1.5 million cases of Covid infection. Iran has officially registered less than 7,000 daily infections since late December, but the number has crossed this level since early ...
Tokyo 2021: Japan, medical experts disagree over safe Olympics
Japanese infectious disease specialist Atsuo Hamada wants to see the Olympics happen in Tokyo this summer, but admits if they were being held anywhere else, he’d probably support a cancellation. “Even without the coronavirus pandemic, the Olympics as a mass gathering fosters all sorts of infectious diseases,” Hamada, a professor at Tokyo Medical University, told AFP. With less than six months until the pandemic-postponed Games, organisers say they’re confident the event will be safe. But some medical experts aren’t so sure, and think cancellation is safer. “I do understand the athletes’ sentiments,” said Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Britain’s University of Southampton. “But I think from… the global public health point of view, there’s nothing about the Olympic...
Archbishop Kaigama: Why Nigerians are afraid to accept coronavirus vaccine
File Photo Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, His Grace Most Revd. Ignatius Kaigama, on Sunday, said many Nigerians are afraid to accept the COVID-19 vaccine because they believe that the health crisis was being manipulated by some people. Kaigama, who stated this in Abuja during his homily at St. Jude’s Parish Zuba, however, urged Nigerians to disregard insinuations that the vaccine was not medically safe and affordable. He said, “Even though many today will seriously question facts about COVID-19 and fear that there is manipulation by some people, we know that the disease is real. “People very dear to us have died of coronavirus disease. There is no doubt that our world is currently sick, ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The fear today is that the menace of Coronavirus will continue to be w...
DR Congo’s president becomes African Union chairman
The DRC’s President Félix Tshisekedi has now taken over the helm of the African Union to serve as the chairman for one-year. He replaces his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa, following the AU’s 34th summit on Saturday. But Tshisekedi faces big challenges this year with the coronavirus pandemic hitting health service and economies hard. The continent has so far been hit less hard than other regions, recording 3.5 percent of global virus cases and 4 percent of global deaths, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). But many African countries are battling damaging second waves while straining to procure sufficient vaccine doses. African leaders are speaking out against hoarding by rich countries at the expense of poorer ones. “There is a vaccin...
PTF: Nigeria has over 100 molecular laboratories
Nigeria can now boast of over 100 molecular laboratories for the testing of COVID-19 in the country, the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force (PTF), Boss Mustapha, has said. This is just as the Chief of Staff to the President, Prof Ibrahim Gambari, flayed the non challant attitude of people in his home state, Kwara, to the pandemic. The SGF who spoke Tuesday at the commissioning of State House Clinic Special Care Centre (COVID-19 Isolation Centre) stated that the number of molecular laboratories grew from two last year to more than 100 as at today and are spread across the 36 states of the federation. His words: ‘‘From just two molecular laboratories for the testing of COVID-19 in Nigeria, we now have over 100 molecular laboratories, public and private, across the 36 States of the Feder...
Nigeria expects 41 million coronavirus vaccine doses from African Union
Nigeria expects to receive 41 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from the African Union, the head of the country’s primary healthcare agency said on Monday, while the health minister said vaccines from Russia and India were being considered. Authorities in Africa’s most populous country, which has 200 million people, plan to inoculate 40% of the population this year and another 30% in 2022. The African Union initially secured 270 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from manufacturers for member states. Last week it was announced that the bloc would receive another 400 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Faisal Shuaib, who heads the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, said Nigeria’s previous request for 10 million doses through the AU had been increased four-fold. “We have applied...
NOA advises Nigerians to disregard conspiracy theories about coronavirus vaccine
File Photo The National Orientation Agency (NOA) has advised Nigerians to disregard conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines and the various rumours being attributed to them. Director-General of NOA, Garba Abari, gave the advice in a statement, made available to newsmen in Abuja on Monday. Abari, while responding to insinuations of the possible use of the vaccines as population control and DNA altering measure, debunked the idea. He said that no vaccine would be allowed into Nigeria or administered to Nigerians without the approval of appropriate authorities. “Whatever vaccine coming into the country must be thoroughly tested and approved by relevant Nigerian authorities,’’ he said. He said the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) as the agency responsib...
Pfizer, BioNTech to limit delays of vaccine shipments to one week
Pfizer and BioNTech said Saturday they will limit the delays of their vaccine deliveries to just one week, after fears in Europe that shipments of the jabs could be slowed for up to a month. The US drugmaker and its German partner “have developed a plan that will allow the scale-up of manufacturing capacities in Europe and deliver significantly more doses in the second quarter,” they said in a joint statement. “As a result, our facility in Puurs, Belgium will experience a temporary reduction in the number of doses delivered in the upcoming week.” Pfizer and BioNTech pledged that deliveries would be back to the original schedule to the European Union from the week of January 25, with increased delivery from the week of February 15. “To accomplish this, certain modifications of production pr...
