₦airaland Forum

Passengers arriving in UK airports face a fortnight in quarantine as the government unveils its latest plans to halt the spread of coronavirus.

The new restrictions are hoped to thwart a second wave of infections from countries that have ended lockdown and allowed travel again. The plans could be put in place from next month, reports The Sun.

Home Secretary Priti Patel and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps will oversee the initiative to stop travellers transmitting the contagion from abroad.

British citizens and those from abroad will be subject to the restrictions which will see returnees complete a special landing card giving information about their health as well as place they expect to quarantine.

Those that fail to stay at the address given will be hit with hefty fines and authorities could also turn up to registered addresses to enforce the tough new measures.

A world-wide campaign is set to be put into place by the government to warn would-be travellers about the steps they would need to take after arriving in the UK.

Countries to have already implemented mandatory 14-day quarantines for new arrivals include Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Greece.

More than 15,000 people arrive at UK airports every day with none undergoing coronavirus tests or temperature screenings. And hundreds of thousands of people have also jetted back into the UK from places like Italy and Spain which have been particularly hard-hit by the virus.

The World Health Organisation has said that screening at airports is not effective without other quarantining measures because it can taken two weeks for a person infected with the virus to begin showing symptoms.

The number of cases detected at airports in China, Thailand, and Malaysia, where screening is being used, is reported to be low.

-TheSun

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/covid-19-all-uk-bound-passengers-to-face-14-day-quarantine-upon-arrival/

President Uhuru Kenyatta (pictured) has dismissed as untrue media reports attributed to an Oxford University researcher that they would use Kenyans to test a Coronavirus vaccine being developed by the British institution.

On the contrary, the president said local research institutions, such as KEMRI, were working on their own vaccines and would collaborate with international partners.

Health Chief Administrative Secretary Rashid Aman on Friday said although a formal request had not been made to the government by the scientists at Oxford University, once made, it would be considered.

An article published by the BBC on Thursday indicated that the UK was considering testing the vaccine in Kenya. “If this request comes to us, it will be scrutinised by the government before we respond to it,” said Dr Aman.

The CAS said even with the expression of interest by the scientists, Kenya had detailed guidelines for such an activity to be carried out in the country. “There are laid down procedures, which are rigorous for approval of any trial,” he said. He added: “We have a robust structure at Pharmacy and Poisons Board for regulating any clinical trial.”

The clinical trials of the said vaccine, which is said to have the ability to boost one’s immunity with just one dose, started in the UK on Thursday.

The vaccine is the latest strand of hope against Covid-19 after both Remdisivir and Hydroxychloroquine drugs failed clinical trials as potential treatment to the disease.

The vaccine is made from a weakened version of common cold virus, extracted from chimpanzees, and modified so that it does not replicate in humans.

However, it is not clear how soon the vaccine or a report on its efficacy will be ready since the scientists have to wait and see if any of the 800 volunteers will be infected.

Only half of the 800 will be injected with the vaccine while the other half will be a control group who to be immunised against meningitis.

The interest of the scientists in Kenya, as reported by the BBC, has been informed by the low number of infections in the country, which currently stands at two per cent.

This means only two of 100 people tested turn positive. As of yesterday, the number of coronavirus cases in Kenya had hit 336 after 16 more people tested positive.

-Standard

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/kenyans-reject-being-used-to-test-covid-19-vaccine/

Nigerian banks are groaning under the Central Bank of Nigeria as the apex bank has taken about 1.47 trillion naira ($3.8 billion) from lenders as additional cash reserves for failing to meet lending and other regulatory targets, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The accounts of almost 30 commercial lenders held with the central bank were debited by the regulator for missing thresholds on cash-reserve and loan-to-deposit ratios, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is confidential. The lenders are appealing the move, they said.

Central Bank of Nigeria spokesman Isaac Okorafor didn’t answer calls to his mobile phone or reply to a text message seeking comment.

Policy makers are swooping on the reserves as the oil-producing nation faces its biggest economic contraction in almost half a century after the Covid-19 outbreak curbed demand for commodities and shut down industries and trade.

It also comes amid a 10% depreciation in the naira against the dollar this year, inflation at a two-year high and after banks agreed to forgo profit to help the economy, preserve confidence in the country and ensure financial stability.

The central bank requires that banks park 27.5% of their deposits with the regulator as cash reserves. The clampdown comes after the central bank’s campaign last year to force lenders to give out more credit — by twice increasing the minimum loan-to-deposit ratio. In September, it debited banks’ accounts with 500 billion naira for falling short of the lending targets, refunding most of the reserves the next month.

The move will drain excess liquidity from the market that could’ve been used to buy foreign exchange, helping to support the naira, Michael Famoroti, the chief economist of Stears Data in Lagos, said by phone. It may also pressure bank earnings as the capital could’ve been deployed into other money-making avenues.

“The central bank doesn’t want them to be playing around with exchange rate, so they want liquidity very tight,” he said. An overnight lending rate stuck at below 5% shows there “is a lot of cash in the system and the regulator is concerned about that.”

The central bank’s firepower to defend the naira is diminishing as cratering oil prices dry up dollar supplies and as its foreign-exchange reserves run down.

The central bank is providing about 3.5 trillion naira in loans that manufacturers and health-care providers can access through commercial banks, which share some of the income. It also allowed banks to restructure loans for industries hit by the virus.

-Bloomberg

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/business-news/nigerian-banks-groan-as-cbn-deducts-3-8-billion-for-missing-lending-targets/

A new research study by United Nations agency on Africa’s readiness to combat COVID-19 has revealed over 3 million Africans may die from the disease.

A statement in the research study specifically said, “Anywhere between 300,000 and 3.3 million African people could lose their lives as a direct result of Covid-19, depending on the intervention measures taken to stop the spread.”

Released in April 2020, the research examines factors that could make Africans vulnerable to Covid-19 in case of a widespread outbreak.

It was conducted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and is titled “Covid-19 in Africa Protecting Lives and Economies.”

It fronts an argument that a huge chunk of African population resides in the urban areas which are rather poorly planned, and are lacking crucial resources lack clean water for personal hygiene.

It partly states: “Africa is particularly susceptible because 56 per cent of the urban population is concentrated in overcrowded and poorly serviced slum dwellings (excluding North Africa) and only 34 per cent of the households have access to basic handwashing facilities.”

The UN study further states only 29 per cent of Africans can work from home as encouraged by governments and the World Health Organization. This it says could put the remaining 71 per cent of the population at higher risk of contracting and spreading the disease.

With Covid-19 being declared more deadly for persons living with health conditions; the UN study argues that Africa could suffer as a result of cases like high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

Inadequate medical facilities to meet urgent medical services has also been noted as a factor which could hand African nations a blow fighting the bug.

“With lower ratios of hospital beds and health professionals to its population than other regions, high dependency on imports for its medicinal and pharmaceutical products, weak legal identity systems for direct benefit transfers, and weak economies that are unable to sustain health and lockdown costs, the continent is vulnerable,” it states.

According to the study, in as much as African countries may contain the virus, its impact may prove to be detrimental to their economies.

It states: “Even if the spread of COVID-19 is suppressed in Africa its economic damage will be unavoidable.”

“The price of oil, which accounts for 40 per cent of Africa’s exports, has halved, and major African exports such as textiles and fresh-cut flowers have crashed.”

The study agrees with revelations in the study which was conducted and released by Mo Ibrahim Foundation on March 31, 2020.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation researched postulated that African countries were lacking capacity to test the virus and even facilities for emergency treatment were inadequate.

“Only 10 African countries provide free and universal health care to their citizens, while healthcare in 22 countries is neither free nor universal. Governments need to make swift improvements in handling and improving access to basic health services,” study said.

But on the hand, it revealed that the situation in African countries may not worsen owing to their younger population, which can survive the infections.

“Africa is the youngest continent in the world, with a median age of less than 20, and it currently seems that younger populations appear to suffer milder symptoms than older people, who have a significantly higher risk of contracting severe symptoms,” the study noted.

-Standard/Media Issues

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/news/new-un-study-reveals-coronavirus-may-kill-over-3-million-africans/

As coronavirus spreads in Lagos, eight hospitals found to have admitted patients for treatment but later tested positive for coronavirus have been closed down on the orders of the Lagos State Government and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

Some members of staff of the these hospitals were also found to have tested positive for the coronavirus, necessitating the closure of these hospitals to enable NCDC carry out decontamination and fumigation of the hospital facilities.

The affected hospitals are Vedic Lifecare, Lekki; Redington, Victoria Island; First Cardiology Consultant, Ikoyi; St. Edwards, Ajah and Paelon Memorial, Ikeja. Others are Southshore Women; Premier Specialist Medical Centre and Choice Opticals.

The patients and members of staff of these hospitals that tested positive have been taken to NCDC Isolation Centre for treatment and management.

According to sources closed to these hospitals, all other members of staff are currently undergoing test and mandatory 14 days quarantine to ascertain their medical status.

Specifically, a source in Vedic Lifecare hospital which confirmed the development to Media Issues said the hospital management has advised all customers and clients who had visited the hospital in the last 10 days to go for test and isolate to enable determination of their state of health.

Consequently, the source confirmed that there is now a mandatory PPE gear for all employees.

It will be recalled that the former Chief of Staff to the President, Late Abba Kyari died in First Cardiology Consultant Hospital, Ikoyi.

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/exclusive/vedic-reddington-6-other-hospitals-closed-over-covid-19/

South Africa is facing a “food crisis”, and the South Africa Food Sovereignty Campaign (SASFC) has called on government to ensure that food parcels are distributed to all communities to feed the poor.

“While we commend the government’s efforts to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdown has not been accompanied with adequate socio-economic mitigation measures,” the SASFC said in a statement.

The organisation said the government’s response to food needs had been inadequate and the Solidarity Fund has not been able to effectively ensure food supply, through food parcels.

It called for politicians to desist from handing out food parcels, and for the Solidarity Fund to work closely with local government to identify community organisations that can facilitate food distribution in grassroots communities.

“The food crisis is going to persist as long as we have the Covid-19 pandemic. The Solidarity Fund is far from blunting the edge of desperation and hunger. Politicians handing out food parcels is not helping the situation and it politicises the crisis,” SASFC said.

-Herald

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/covid-19-lockdown-hunger-crisis-hits-south-africa/

Demonstrations to demand an end to stay-at-home measures that have pummelled the U.S. economy spread to Texas on Saturday as the governor at the epicentre of the U.S. coronavirus crisis said his state of New York may finally be past the worst.

New York, which has recorded nearly half the country’s deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the highly infectious virus, on Saturday reported 540 coronavirus-related deaths for April 17, down from 630 a day earlier and the lowest daily tally since April 1.

The number of patients in the state requiring intensive care and ventilators to help them breathe was also down.

“If you look at the past three days, you could argue that we are past the plateau and we’re starting to descend, which would be very good news,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in his daily briefing.

Some 2,000 people were still being hospitalized with COVID-19 every day, Cuomo said, and he noted 36 of the latest New York deaths occurred at nursing homes, which have been ravaged by the pandemic nationwide.

In neighboring New Jersey, both the number of new hospitalizations and new coronavirus cases were also slightly down from the day before, Governor Phil Murphy said. But he added: “We are not out of the woods, we have not yet plateaued.”

Illinois reported 125 new coronavirus deaths and an additional 1,585 cases but said the growth rate was slowing.

Murphy said he had a “concerning” call with Senate minority leader and fellow Democrat Chuck Schumer, who told him there was no momentum in the U.S. Congress for direct aid to states whose economies were suffering from the stay-at-home orders aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Without federal aid, the state will see “historic” layoffs, he said.

More than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past month as closures of businesses and schools and severe travel restrictions have hammered the economy.

People sit in a car with an American flag as protesters against the state’s extended stay-at-home order to help slow the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) demonstrate at the Capitol building in Austin, Texas, U.S., April 18, 2020. REUTERS/Callaghan O’Hare

But an influential research model said late on Friday the strict adherence to the orders imposed in 42 of the 50 U.S. states was a key factor behind an improved outlook for the country’s coronavirus death toll.

The University of Washington’s predictive model, regularly updated and often cited by state public health authorities and White House officials, projected the virus would take 60,308 U.S. lives by Aug. 4, down 12% from a forecast earlier in the week.

The model predicted some states may be able to begin safely easing restrictions as early as May 4.

PUSHBACK

Many have already started pushing back against the measures.

Governor Murphy chastised an official in Atlantic County, home to Atlantic City, for expressing frustration in a Facebook post over the effect of the closures on the casino-dependent local economy. County surrogate Jim Curcio said his comments were his personal opinion.

“I’ve lived here all my life and when we go into a recession here we seem to be the last to come out of it and people suffer terribly and the most vulnerable suffer the most,” Curcio told Reuters on Saturday. “What is happening to the private sector is my breaking my heart.”

On Saturday, several dozen protesters gathered in the Texas capital of Austin chanting “USA! USA!” and “Let us work!”

In Brookfield, Wisconsin, hundreds of demonstrators cheered as they lined a main road and waved American flags to protest at the extension of that state’s “safer at home” order.

Earlier in the week, scattered protests erupted in the capitols of Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia. The demonstrators mostly flouted the social-distancing rules and did not wear the face masks recommended by public health officials.

As of Friday night, New York has mandated the statewide wearing of masks for anyone out in public and unable to practice social distancing.

Republican President Donald Trump appeared to encourage protesters with a series of Twitter posts on Friday calling for them to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia, all run by Democratic governors.

Several states, including Ohio, Michigan, Texas and Florida, have said they aim to reopen parts of their economies, perhaps by May 1 or even sooner, but appeared to be staying cautious.

Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis reopened some beaches with restrictions from Friday evening, but also said on Saturday that schools will remain closed and continue distance learning the rest of this school year.

Fellow Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has also extended school closures to the end of the academic year.

Health experts say that to avoid a second wave of infections as people return to work, extensive testing must be available to track infections, as well as contact tracing and antibody testing to learn who had been previously infected and might have some immunity.

Vice President Mike Pence said on Friday the United States had the capacity to do a sufficient amount of testing for states to move into a phase one of reopening.Governors and state health officials say there is nowhere near enough test kits and equipment available, however.

The United States has by far the world’s largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 720,000 infections and over 37,000 deaths.

The handful of states that did not issue stay-at-home orders have all seen significant surges in new cases.

-Reuters

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/news/covid-19-lockdown-frustration-spreads-in-us-over-stay-at-home/

Undocumented migrants are dying of coronavirus because they are too afraid to seek help, charities and MPs have warned amid renewed calls for the Home Office to suspend NHS immigration checks.

In one case, a Filipino man in his mid-fifties who worked as a cleaner died from suspected coronavirus last week after not accessing healthcare for fears of being reported to the Home Office, according to campaigners.

Sixty cross-party MPs have written to the secretary of health and social care calling for the immediate suspension of charging for migrants and all associated data-sharing and immigration checks, which they say are undermining the government’s efforts to respond to the pandemic.

The man, known only as Elvis, who was in his mid-fifties, is said to have died in his home on 8 April after suffering from a fever and a cough for two weeks. His wife, also an undocumented Filipino national, is currently suffering with similar symptoms but also too afraid to access healthcare.

Before he fell ill, Elvis, who had been in the UK for around 10 years, was working in cleaning jobs and sending money back to his family in the Philippines. His wife, a domestic worker, was reportedly in their home with her husband’s body for 24 hours before an undertaker arrived to take it away. She did not want to speak with the media.

Susan Cueva, of the Kanlangun Filipino Consortium, a charity that is now supporting Elvis’s wife with food deliveries, told The Independent that although Elvis was seriously ill, he was too afraid to go to the hospital for fear that he would be charged for his treatment, which he could not afford, and that he would be reported to immigration authorities.

Ms Cueva said the man’s wife was devastated at his death and terrified about how she will sustain herself without him: “Having lived with her partner for 10 years, she really doesn’t know what to do with her life here, especially as she’s undocumented. She is so terrified and really traumatised. She can’t even talk to people, she just starts crying. Because of her grief she doesn’t even know if she’s feeling better or not.

“They lived normally in this country. They couldn’t declare their work or access public services, but they managed to live very self-sufficiently. People employed them, and they were able to support their family back in the Philippines and rent a place and be part of the community.”

She added: “We are aware that there are many undocumented workers in the UK who are in this situation. They have lost their jobs due to the lockdown and are ineligible for government support. They often live in crowded conditions with other undocumented workers and they are too scared to go to a doctor or hospital.”

The letter from MPs to Matt Hancock, the health secretary, raises Elvis’s case and states “migrant communities – who are disproportionately at risk of exclusion, stigma and discrimination – are not currently receiving the necessary safeguards”.

The current NHS charging policy, introduced in 2018 as part of the “hostile environment”, charges non-EU patients 50 per cent more than it costs the NHS to treat them and requires hospital staff to demand proof of entitlement to free healthcare.

Medics call for suspension of NHS charging rules during pandemic

In response to the coronavirus outbreak, ministers introduced regulations on 29 January that meant no charge could be made to an overseas visitor for diagnosis or treatment of the virus, saying it was “very important, for public health protection, that overseas visitors are not deterred from seeking treatment for Covid-19”.

But the MPs warned while this was a “welcome step” it does “not go far enough”, adding: “It does not undo years of hostile environment policies, in which migrants have been told that they will be charged for healthcare or faced with immigration enforcement when accessing public services. In the present moment, this undermines the government’s efforts to respond to the pandemic.”

The letter, coordinated by Labour MPs Apsana Begum, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Zarah Sultana, points out that other countries, including Ireland, Portugal and South Korea, have already taken steps to improve access for their migrant communities, in recognition of its importance to combat the spread of Covid-19.

“The NHS was founded on the principle of universal healthcare, and we now have the opportunity to lead the world in ensuring that everyone who needs care can access it safely and without fear during this crisis,” it states.

“It is vital that a clear message is sent to our migrant communities that they can seek care when they need it, that they are included in our society and have a part to play in response to this crisis.”

The letter calls on ministers to immediately suspend all NHS charging for migrants, suspend all data sharing between health services and the Home Office and implement a firewall to ensure patient data is not shared with the Home Office or other bodies for the purposes of immigration enforcement.

It follows a similar demand to the government earlier this week from medical groups, including the British Medical Association and Doctors of the World UK, warning the measures risk “undermining national efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19”.

Zarah Sultana, Labour MP for Coventry South, said: “Migrants are at the frontline of this pandemic. They disproportionately make-up NHS staff and other key worker roles, but the hostile environment has led to migrants – like Elvis – dying from Covid-19 without seeking healthcare.”

Christine Jardine, home affairs spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, said it was “vital” that no one who needs medical help is prevented from accessing healthcare, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, adding: “Sadly, after the awful experience of the Windrush Scandal, far too many migrants are put off seeking treatment.”

Brian Dikoff, a legal caseworker at Migrants Organise, said: “This hostile environment in the NHS is a real disaster for many of our members, and is hindering the collective response to the pandemic. Everybody has to know, with confidence, that they can access healthcare safely. For this the government must suspend charging and data sharing immediately, and restore the inclusive principles of the NHS.”

The government has been approached for comment.

-Independent

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/covid-19-undocumented-migrants-in-uk-dying-untreated-over-fear-of-deportation/

By Emeka Nze

Despite World Health Organisation (WHO)’s call on governments to reduce access to alcohol during lockdown, alcohol is being freely consumed in Nigeria, raising risk of catching the coronavirus and worsening chances of recovery from the ailment.

Lagos, Ogun, Abuja and some states are currently on lockdown, yet alcohol of various types is being consumed in these places, either as mixture for coronavirus or for pleasure to kill boredom during the lockdown.

During a briefing in Europe on Wednesday, WHO called on governments around the world to tighten restrictions on access to alcohol during lockdown, saying consumption can increase the risk of catching the coronavirus and worsen chances of recovery once contracted.

WHO said alcohol consumption was associated with a number of communicable and noncommunicable diseases that can make a person more vulnerable to catching the virus.

“Alcohol compromises the body’s immune system and increases the risk of adverse health outcomes,” the organisation said. “Therefore, people should minimise their alcohol consumption at any time, and particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

WHO noted that alcohol may put those with mental health struggles and a history of alcohol abuse at a greater risk because of increased self-isolation. The organisation said it may also raise the risk of domestic violence.

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, we should really ask ourselves what risks we are taking by leaving people under lockdown in their homes with a substance that is harmful both in terms of their health and the effects of their behaviour on others, including violence,” said WHO’s alcohol and illicit drugs programme manager, Carina Ferreira-Borges.

WHO also debunked the “dangerous myth that consuming high-strength alcohol can kill the coronavirus”.

“It does not,” said WHO, adding that it could result in serious health issues, including death, especially if it is adulterated with methanol.

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/alcohol-cannot-cure-coronavirus-it-raises-risk-of-infection-says-who/

The coronavirus outbreak could affect a third of the 440 million formal and informal jobs in Africa as lockdowns across the continent deprive people in the world’s poorest continent of the means to make a living, according to McKinsey & Co.

Between 9 million and 18 million of the continent’s 140 million formal jobs could be lost as a result of the crisis, McKinsey said in its Finding Africa’s Path report. A further 30 million to 35 million could see a reduction in wages and working hours. One hundred million of the 300 million informal jobs on the continent are at risk, it said.

In major sectors such as manufacturing, retail and wholesale, tourism, and construction, the jobs of more than half the workforce could be affected, McKinsey said.

While the epidemic has been slow to take off in Africa, the fallout from the disease has decimated the economies of the continent. Shutdowns across many countries have curbing activity while the snarling of global supply chains has depressed the prices of the commodities many countries export. The World Bank now projects the region will have its first recession in 25 years.

There are also concerns that limited testing is suppressing the real number of infections, with the disease apparently yet to take hold in many African countries, and a rapid rise in numbers is expected.

Africa is ill-equipped to fund a medical response and needs to spend $5 billion on health over the next 100 days, McKinsey said.

“The entire continent may have just 20,000 beds in intensive care units, equivalent to 1.7 ICU beds per 100,000 people,” the consultancy firm said. “By comparison, China has an estimated 3.6 ICU beds per 100,000 people, while the U.S. has 29.4.”

In sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa, there may be as few as 3,500 ventilators, McKinsey said. The U.S. has 160,000. Masks are also in short supply.

-Bloomberg

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/150-million-of-jobs-at-risk-in-africa-over-covid-19-says-mckinsey/

The 53-year-old paraplegic man usually sells phone cards. But an extended lockdown to fight the new coronavirus in Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos, has left him stranded.

The Lagos state government sent him a text after the lockdown began on March 30 saying he would receive a food parcel. But no food came, and with government offices closed, he had no idea when or how he would get any.

“I am sure that if this coronavirus did not kill people with disability, definitely this order of stay at home will kill people,” he told Reuters outside a building near the airport where a friend is letting him stay.

Hunger and anger are building in Lagos and other major African cities with little or no social safety net to protect the poor from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The World Food Programme says at least 20% of Africa’s 1.2 billion people are already undernourished – the highest percentage in the world.

The combination of widespread poverty, reliance on imported food and price spikes due to the epidemic could prove deadly if African governments don’t act quickly, it says.

Under new restrictions in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, millions who once lived on daily wages are running out of food.

Many work as traders, labourers or craftsmen in the informal sector, which accounts for 85% of employment across the continent, and must now stay home with no savings as a buffer.

In Lagos, three out of seven of its 20 million residents can’t always get enough food under normal circumstances, according to the Lagos Food Bank Initiative, a nonprofit. The 14-day lockdown, extended by another two weeks on Monday, has thrown millions more into need.

Food prices spiked as residents raced to stock up. Imported rice rose 11% and the price of garri, a staple made from cassava, nearly doubled, said Lagos-based risk consultancy SBM Intelligence.

Michael Sunbola, the food bank’s president, said his organization was getting 50% more calls than usual from frantic residents. Some trek for five hours to collect food.

As his team unloaded rice, beans, oil and cassava flour this month in Agboyi Ketu, he said many would struggle as the shutdown continues.

“We are afraid some people might starve,” Sunbola said.

The Lagos state government is trying to help. It distributed 200,000 food packs during the first weeks of the lockdown and aims to give out 2 million as soon as possible, Agriculture Commissioner Gbolahan Lawal told Reuters.

-Reuters.

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/millions-face-hunger-as-african-cities-impose-coronavirus-lockdowns/

A sex education programme teaching children about masturbation and porn has been scrapped. The Warwickshire County Council scheme sparked opposition for being too graphic with young people. The All About Me (AAM) programme sought to teach children about sex.

However, parents claimed their children were being exposed to explicit sexual content that promoted “experimental transgender ideas in school.” They also said it “encouraged masturbation” and encouraged an unhealthy view of pornographic material.

The programme was originally envisaged to “support young people’s understanding of healthy relationships and to enable them to build positive and safe relationships as they grow and develop into adults”, according to the council.

Warwickshire County Council suspends sex education website after telling girl of 12 it’s ‘natural to get Hot and watch something that turns you on’ This Morning viewers repulsed by Eamonn and Ruth’s excruciating toe-sucking chat. But some parents and campaigners claimed the material clashed with traditional family values. An accompanying website, named Respect Yourself, aimed at teenagers and young adults also met with a barrage of condemnation.

One woman from Leamington Spa said when the plans were unveiled she was ‘horrified’ when she saw the online content. The mum, who did not want to be named, said: “At first I thought it looked fine. Then I started to read it and some of it is really quite disturbing.

“I thought ‘is this what the council is telling my kids, that porn is fine and there’s no such thing as porn addiction?'”

Hundreds of people signed a petition calling for the website to be taken down. Respect Yourself was subsequently taken offline by the council pending the outcome of an independent review, which is yet to deliver its findings.

However, the schools programme is being replaced with an “information and signposting offer to schools”, according to council documents. Essentially, this will follow the Department for Education’s new national materials and resources on sex education, which are still being developed.

The Christian Institute, a nondenominational campaign group, had threatened legal action against the council if it failed to address its concerns about AAM.

The group claimed: “Lesson materials encouraged masturbation and included gratuitously graphic sexual images yet made no reference to marriage, contrary to national requirements and despite the lessons concerned not being classed as sex education.”

In a press release, the group quoted two parents from Warwickshire who spoke under anonymity to welcome the decision. One said: “This is not before time. My wife and I were deeply troubled by the explicit nature of some of the All About Me materials – and the ideology underpinning them.

“We don’t want our children being taught about masturbation, explicit sexual content or experimental transgender ideas in school. For a long time, it felt like the council didn’t want to listen to the concerns of many reasonable parents; we’re glad and relieved that they have now withdrawn this programme.”

Another parent said: “I’m delighted. These materials were never suitable for children. They always seemed to be more concerned with indoctrination than education. “We’ll have to see what the Education Department come up with. “Hopefully it will be a lot better than All About Me.”

John Denning, Education Officer at The Christian Institute, called for swift action to ensure parents are aware of the changes. Mr Denning said: “Warwickshire’s climbdown will come as welcome news to hundreds of concerned parents. The highly explicit imagery and one-sided ideology of All About Me has no place in Primary Relationships Education.

“Schools are obviously facing a challenging time at the moment. But as soon as they can, they must consult with parents on a different approach to teaching RSE which complies with the law. As with other teaching in state schools, it must be balanced, objective and critical, not pushing particular controversial views such as transgender ideology.”

In a Cabinet report, the council notes that an independent review of AAM has been carried out by the Sex Education Forum, part of the National Children’s Bureau, and “approves the replacement of it with an information and signposting offer to schools.”

The document states: “The offer will be in line with the Department of Education’s national materials and resources to support schools to meet their statutory requirements under the new Relationships & Sex Education regulations.”

The review praised AAM as “a comprehensive primary school programme, informed by international evidence” and found “the programme of lessons is admirable in spanning all primary years.”

However, the report noted that the programme predates new Government guidance and regulations, and would need updating to fully comply with the guidelines.

– BirminghamLIVE

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/news/sex-education-programme-teaching-kids-about-masturbation-and-porn-scrapped/

Public-facing scientists, UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and his US counterpart, Anthony Fauci, have reaffirmed that Covid-19 vaccine will be ready in 12 to 18 months. But other voices – including some of those in the race to create a vaccine themselves – have suggested that it could be as early as June. Who is right?

The former, probably, but it’s complicated because this pandemic is forcing change at almost every step in the process by which a new vaccine arrives at a needle near us.

“It really depends on what you mean by ‘having a vaccine’,” says Marian Wentworth, president and CEO of Management Sciences for Health, a Massachusetts-based global not-for-profit organisation that seeks to build resilient health systems, and a long-time observer of vaccine development. “If you mean one that can be used in a mass vaccination campaign, allowing us all to get on with our lives, then 12 to 18 months is probably right.”

But in terms of an experimental vaccine that is deemed safe and effective enough to be rolled out in a more limited way – to high-risk groups such as health workers, say – that could be ready within weeks or months, under emergency rules developed by drug regulatory agencies and the World Health Organization in the context of the recent Ebola epidemics in Africa.

When the University of Oxford’s Adrian Hill told the Guardian that his group’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate could be ready by the summer, it was this kind of readiness to which he was probably referring. The group, led by Sarah Gilbert, has since stated that a vaccine shown to be effective in phase-3 clinical trials that could be manufactured in large quantities won’t be ready before the autumn even in a best-case scenario. And that scenario is “highly ambitious and subject to change”.

Normally, a vaccine is developed in the lab before being tested on animals. If it proves safe and generates a promising immune response in this pre-clinical phase, it enters human or clinical trials. These are divided into three phases, each of which takes longer and involves more people than the previous one. Phase 1 establishes the vaccine’s safety in a small group of healthy individuals, with the goal of ruling out debilitating side effects. Phases 2 and 3 test efficacy, and in an outbreak like the present one they are conducted in places where the disease is prevalent. In parallel with these later phases, production capacity for the candidate vaccine is gradually built up, so that factories are capable of producing it on a large scale if and when regulatory agencies judge that it should be licensed.

In an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine on 30 March, representatives of the Oslo-based not-for-profit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which is helping to finance and coordinate Covid-19 vaccine development, laid out an accelerated version of this process that they believe is more suited to a pandemic. This “pandemic paradigm” implements certain steps in parallel, such as animal and phase-1 clinical testing. It also involves scaling up production capacity before sufficient safety and efficacy data are available – a financially risky step, given that that may never materialise, and one that requires governments and not-for-profit organisations such as Cepi to share that extra financial risk with pharmaceutical companies if they want them to engage. Mass production is critical in a pandemic, when hundreds of millions if not billions of doses are needed – and many countries are now scrambling to build new vaccine production facilities.

“People now appreciate that the lengthy process of conventional licensing of vaccines is not going to be helpful in the context of an epidemic,” says Beate Kampmann, who heads the vaccine centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Bringing a new vaccine to the clinic has taken 10 to 20 years in the past

Prudently, Cepi did not attach a timeline to its accelerated paradigm, but the 12- to 18-month estimate already takes it into account. Bringing a new vaccine to the clinic has taken 10 to 20 years in the past. Nevertheless, the accelerated paradigm is being implemented now. A Boston-based biotech firm, Moderna, saw its experimental Covid-19 vaccine enter human trials on 16 March, just 10 weeks after the first genetic sequences of Sars-CoV-2 – the virus that causes the disease – were released. Others will follow soon.

“We’re getting to candidates much more quickly,” says Kampmann, who puts this progress down to advances made in the fight against Ebola. “The step-up in technology that we have seen in the last five years has really made a difference.”

There are many hurdles ahead, though. Most of the 70-odd Covid-19 vaccine candidates being developed and tested will not make it to the licensing stage, and those that have been fastest out of the blocks may still encounter problems later on. Moderna’s innovative technology allowed it to generate a candidate quickly, but no vaccine using this platform has been licensed to date.

At the Pasteur Institute in Paris, on the other hand, a Covid-19 vaccine candidate is still in pre-clinical development, but because it piggybacks on established technology – a licensed measles vaccine – the testing and licensing processes will go faster. And this kind of vaccine can already be produced in large quantities.

While there can be no shortcuts to establishing safety and efficacy, proposals have been put forward for how these experimental vaccines might be tested more rapidly without sacrificing scientific rigour. In February, for example, the WHO published a draft protocol for phase 2 and 3 trials that would test a number of candidates simultaneously, in multi-country trials according to standardised criteria.

Another proposal is to conduct controlled human challenge trials, in which healthy volunteers are given a candidate vaccine and then infected with Sars-CoV-2. These are ethically questionable, especially before scientists understand why young and otherwise healthy people are ending up on ventilators. A similar approach, being implemented by the London-based clinical research group Hvivo, invites volunteers to be infected with a milder coronavirus – but how applicable its findings will be to Sars-CoV-2 is not clear. If our own body can’t prevent us from getting it again, that would be one pretty damning signal

There are still many unknowns with respect to Covid-19, including for how long any vaccine will provide protection. A strong indication of this will be whether people who have recovered from the disease can catch it again. There have been anecdotal reports of re-infection, but the phenomenon is not well understood. “If our own body can’t prevent us from getting it again, that would be one pretty damning signal,” says Wentworth.

Once a vaccine is licensed, there will still be political obstacles to getting it to where it’s needed, because each country or public health jurisdiction has to make its own decision to roll it out. There will also be issues of prioritisation – who should get it first, if supplies are limited – which authorities are discussing now.

A vaccine that is approved a year from now may arrive after the end of the current pandemic, but if so it won’t be wasted – first because Covid-19 may recur seasonally, and second because the vaccine could itself be repurposed in the event of an outbreak of a different coronavirus. That will be no consolation to victims of this pandemic, or their relatives, but it does mean that humanity will be better protected in future. As Wentworth says: “That learning, we won’t unlearn.”

-theguardian

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/news/coronavirus-vaccine-ready-in-12-to-18-months/

Nigeria’s anti-graft agency has criticised a letter from a powerful U.S. senator questioning the return to Nigeria of more than $300 million in funds looted by former military ruler General Sani Abacha.

The dispute, relating to a tri-partite agreement signed in February between the United States, the British dependency of Jersey and Nigeria, casts doubt on the extent to which the United States will aid efforts to move cash back to the West African country.

Abacha ruled Africa’s largest oil producer from 1993 until his death in 1998. Corruption watchdog Transparency International estimates he stole as much as $5 billion of public money during that time, though he was never charged with corruption while he was alive.

Nigeria has been working with governments worldwide in recent years to help repatriate some of the funds stolen by Abacha and boost its finances.

President Muhammadu Buhari has also made tackling corruption a priority since taking office in 2015. Endemic graft among the political elite dating back decades has left most Nigerians mired in poverty, despite the country being Africa’s biggest economy.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley earlier this month wrote to the head of the U.S. Justice Department’s anti-money laundering unit asking for proof that funds returned to Nigeria would go toward infrastructure projects, as its government has stated.

Grassley accused Ibrahim Magu, head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Attorney General Abubakar Malami of using their roles as an “enforcement arm against anyone voicing opposition to Buhari’s government.”

The EFCC, in a statement issued on Friday, said it “would not be dragged into any controversy over an allegation that has no fact or any iota of proof.”

“The Commission remains focused on its mandate against economic and financial crimes and will not be deterred by spurious allegations from individuals with hidden agenda,” EFCC spokesman Tony Orilade said in the statement.

Grassley said “it seems odd that the (U.S.) DOJ would help facilitate the payment of $320 million to the Nigerian government without first insisting on proper safeguards to prevent the further misuse of funds.”

“Given all these circumstances, it is critical for Congress to understand what steps the United States government is taking, before it helps transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to Nigeria, to ensure that the money is not fuelling more corruption and government abuses.”

A spokesman for Malami also rejected Grassley’s allegations, and said the government’s anti-corruption battle was “impartial, objective and non-discriminatory.”

-Reuters.


http://www.mediaissuesng.com/politics/300-abacha-loot-u-s-senators-query-over-repatriation-rejected-by-nigeria/

As cases of the deadly coronavirus continue to soar, people are washing their hands, social distancing, and getting enough sleep and exercise to boost their immune system and reduce the risk of infections.

But experts say that maintaining a healthy diet can also give you an edge, although no foods have been specifically targeted to ward off COVID-19, according to CNBC.

“Our immune system relies on several factors to fight and combat bacteria, viruses and other invaders,” Dr. David Friedman, the No. 1. bestselling author and syndicated radio and television expert, tells Newsmax. “To be healthy, you need to eat healthfully.”

Friedman, the international bestselling author of “Food Sanity: How to Eat in a World of Fads and Fiction,” tells Newsmax that what we consume has a direct effect on supporting our immune system.

Here are the top immune-boosting foods to stock up on during this crisis:

Red Bell Peppers. Bell Peppers are very high in vitamin C and just one provides 170% of the recommended daily allowance. Vitamin C helps build up your immune system, which is why many healthcare providers recommend taking this vitamin at the first sign of a cough, cold, or flu. Vitamin C from bell peppers is helpful in the production of white blood cells, the body’s major defense against disease. Friedman notes that yellow and red peppers have more antioxidant benefits than green peppers.

Broccoli. One cup of broccoli provides more vitamin C than you need in an entire day without causing the blood sugar spike that happens with drinking citrus juice. “Broccoli is packed with phytochemicals and antioxidants that support our immune system,” Dr. Seema Sarin, a holistic health practitioner, tells CNBC.

Mushrooms. These delicious fungi are one of the few natural dietary sources of vitamin D, which helps the body absorb calcium, promoting bone health. Studies conducted at the University of Florida’s Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition found that eating shiitake mushrooms daily improves immunity better than any pharmaceutical drug currently on the market, says Friedman.

Yogurt. “Yogurt is a great source of probiotics, which are the good bacteria that can help promote a healthy gut and immune system,” Sarin tells CNBC. Recent studies have shown that probiotics are effective for fighting the common cold and influenza-like respiratory infections.

Spinach. Sarin tells CNBC that spinach is rich in vitamin C and is an excellent source of antioxidants that shield our immune cells from environmental damage. “Plus, it has beta-carotene, an essential component of proper immune function,” she says.

Sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds are high in vitamin E, an antioxidant that helps boost the immune system, Emily Wunder, RD, tells CNBC.

Strawberries. Wunder eats a half cup of strawberries daily to get 50% of her daily requirement. “Vitamin C is great for strengthening your immune system,” she says.

Chickpeas. Chickpeas are packed with zinc, says Wunder, which helps the immune system control and regulate immune responses. Zinc may be a crucial factor in fighting the coronavirus and with the shortage of zinc supplements on the market, try adding chickpeas to your salad instead.

– Newsmax

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/covid-19-these-8-foods-can-boost-your-immune-system-say-experts/

Douglas Chambers, his daughter Wendy Russell and three other people came down with coronavirus symptoms just days after the birthday party, and everyone recovered except him.

Douglas Chambers, from Glasgow, was one of five people who became unwell with Covid-19 symptoms after attending the bash for his daughter Wendy Russell.

Ms Russell also fell ill three days after the party with a fever, aches and a shortness of breath that made it feel like she was drowning.

When Mr Chambers developed the same symptoms, he “knew what it meant”, but he was determined to beat the disease and get out of the hospital.

Mr Chambers, who had asthma and a heart condition, spent just over two weeks in hospital before his family was forced to turn off his life support on March 26.

His family made recordings of their voices and a playlist of his favourite Rolling Stones songs for hospital staff to play on a loop as he lay unconscious in an intensive care unit.

Ms Russell told the Rutherglen Reformer: “After he found out he had it, he was in tears, so upset. “He knew himself what it meant. He was heartbroken when he phoned me up to let me know.”

Ms Russell and the other three party guests recovered. They believe they contracted the virus at the party on March 7, just over two weeks before the UK’s lockdown began.

At that time, there were only 11 confirmed cases in Scotland and all involved patients who became infected abroad.

Coronavirus wasn’t even a topic of discussion at the birthday party, said Ms Russell. Within a week of falling ill, Mr Chambers was admitted to hospital, where he tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus.

As his condition worsened, he suddenly stopped replying to loved ones’ text messages and their calls weren’t going through to his mobile.

He was sedated and put on a ventilator in the ICU, and on March 26 a doctor delivered the devastating news that nothing else could be done in a bid to save him.

Mr Chambers’ daughter, Lynsey Chambers, 43, had to carry out the heartbreaking decision to switch off her father’s life support alone because her sister, Ms Russell, was still unwell.

Ms Chambers wore personal protective equipment (PPE), including a mask, as she was allowed to go in and say goodbye to her dying father.

The grieving sisters were unable to comfort each other due to isolation rules. Mum-of-one Ms Russell said: “Lynsey cannot sleep, because she feels like she has played God. Mr Chambers and Ms Russell did the North Coast 500 on their motorcycles last year (Image: Rutherglen Reformer)

“She is tearing herself apart, because she was the only one there and did not have that family network of support.”

Their father was laid to rest this week, but the sisters were unable to hold a funeral for him or give him a fitting tribute due to lockdown rules which have placed restrictions on services.

People in Bridgeton, where he grew up, stood and applauded as his coffin was taken from a funeral home. They timed their daily exercise so they could pay tribute to him.

Ms Russell, now recovered, rode his Triumph America motorbike behind the hearse.

It is thought that Mr Chambers contracted the virus at his daughter’s birthday party (Image: Rutherglen Reformer)

The funeral was restricted to just 10 mourners. Ms Russell said: “It is a lottery who gets to go. No church service, no last respects, no family cars. At one point we weren’t sure we would get a minister to do the service.

“We couldn’t even pick a coffin due to the shortage. The family can’t get together afterwards. They just have to go home.

“You cannot get together for a cup of tea and have a laugh about the good times. You cannot grieve. This is the kind of stuff people need to know.”

-Mirror

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/dad-dies-after-catching-coronavirus-at-daughters-40th-birthday-party/

Zenith Bank Plc, Nigeria’s leading financial institution, has introduced an automated voice banking service, an interactive voice response (IVR) solution which enables customers to perform basic banking transactions by dialing a dedicated phone line through their registered phone numbers and following the prompts.

By simply dialing +234 (1) 278 7000 from the phone number linked to their accounts and following the prompts, customers can pay DSTV/GOTV bills, restrict their accounts or block their cards, request account statement via email, view the last five transactions, transfer funds, buy airtime, and do lots more.

Speaking on the launch of the product, the Group Managing Director / Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu said that the “Zenith automated voice banking service is designed to ensure a truly amazing experience that will offer convenience for our teeming customers”. The GMD added that the self-service product offers quick response to customers in addition to security entrenched by the multilayer authentication mechanism. He urged the Bank’s customers to take advantage of this unique service particularly at this critical time when the physical interface with the Bank has been greatly impacted due to social distancing and the restriction of movement in some states of the federation due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Zenith Bank has clearly distinguished itself in the Nigerian financial services industry through superior service quality, unique customer experience and sound financial indices. The bank remains a clear leader in the digital space with several firsts in the deployment of innovative products, solutions and alternative channels that ensure convenience, speed and safety of transactions.

The Bank’s commitment to world-class service standards has led to several product innovations over the last couple of months including the “Zenith Timeless Account”, which allows Nigerians aged 55 years and above Bank for free, the “Zenith Save4me”, a high-interest target savings account and “Dubai Visa Service” on the Zenith Internet Banking Platform, which allows convenient application and payment for visas to Dubai.

As a testament to its excellent performance, commitment to best-in-class service and recognition as one of the most innovative financial institutions in Nigeria, Zenith Bank was ranked as the Best Digital Bank in Nigeria 2019 by Agusto and Co. The Bank was also voted as the Best Commercial Bank in Nigeria 2019 by the World Finance and emerged as Bank of the Year and Best Bank in Retail Banking at the 2019 BusinessDay Banks and Other Financial Institutions (BOFI) Awards. Most recently, Zenith Bank was recognized as the Most Valuable Banking Brand in Nigeria, for the third consecutive year, in the Banker Magazine “Top 500 Banking Brands 2020” and the Bank of the Decade (People’s Choice) at the ThisDay Awards 2020.

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/business-news/zenith-bank-launches-automated-voice-banking-service-for-customers/

Use of blood plasma for treatment of coronavirus patients has been approved in the UK and USA.

The coronavirus treatment which uses blood from recovered patients can help patients get better within three days, a study has found.

Ten COVID-19 patients in China who were severely ill in hospital saw their symptoms disappear or rapidly improve within three days after the therapy.

They were given a dose of blood donated from COVID-19 survivors, which had the antibodies necessary for their immune system to clear the virus.

Known as convalescent plasma therapy, it has recently been given the green light by medical regulators in the UK and US to trial on critically ill patients, following the lead of hospitals in China.

As well as proving to be life-saving, the therapy appears to be safe so far, with no serious side effects observed in the small study group.

It comes after a New York City mother who survived coronavirus last week became one of the first Americans to donate her blood plasma in hope of helping others. Tiffany Pinckney, 39, said she felt like ‘a beacon of hope’ for those suffering.

But although experts say convalescent plasma is ‘an important area to pursue’, there is no conclusive evidence it is effective yet.

There is no cure for the killer coronavirus, which has infected more than 1.3million people worldwide and killed almost 80,000. Thousands of patients worldwide are involved in trials of promising medicines.

A key advantage to the blood based therapy is that it’s available immediately and relies only drawing blood from a former patient.

It is also significantly cheaper than developing a new drug, which costs millions to take through trials and regulation before mass production.

A coronavirus treatment approved in the UK and US which uses blood from recovered patients helps patients get better, a study shows. Tiffany Pinckney, 39, (pictured) a recovered New-Yorker who was one of the first to donate her blood in the city, said she felt like ‘a beacon of hope’ for those suffering.

A coronavirus treatment approved in the UK and US which uses blood from recovered patients helps patients get better, a study shows. Tiffany Pinckney, 39, (pictured) a recovered New-Yorker who was one of the first to donate her blood in the city, said she felt like ‘a beacon of hope’ for those suffering

The treatment, known as convalescent plasma (CP) therapy, involves using antibody-rich blood plasma of those who have recovered from coronavirus, which can fight infection. Pictured, Diana Berrent was the first recovered patient to have her blood screened for antibodies at Columbia University, Irving, New York.

The treatment, known as convalescent plasma (CP) therapy, involves using antibody-rich blood plasma of those who have recovered from coronavirus, which can fight infection. Pictured, Diana Berrent was the first recovered patient to have her blood screened for antibodies at Columbia University, Irving, New York

The treatment – used for around a century for other infections – works by bolstering a patient’s own immune system to fight the virus.

Infusing patients with blood plasma has also been used to tackle SARS and MERS, two similar coronaviruses, as well as the deadly infection Ebola.

Plasma makes up around 55 per cent of all blood volume and provides the liquid for red and white blood cells to be carried around the body in.

By injecting this into patients it can provide their bodies with a vital dose of crucial substances called antibodies.

Antibodies can only be created by people who have already been infected and learnt how to fight off an infection, such as SARS-CoV-2.

It may be the best hope for COVID-19 patients while scientists work to develop new, specific treatments for the disease.

It is significantly cheaper than developing a new drug, which costs millions of dollars to take through trials and regulation before mass production.

The study in Wuhan – where the coronavirus pandemic began in December – was led by Kai Duan of China’s National Biotec Group Co. Ltd.

Because it was a pilot study, which assess the feasibility of a treatment, the findings are only preliminary.

However, the results were published in a respected journal called the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

Ten patients at three different hospitals were enrolled to get convalescent plasma therapy. They also received other promising drugs.

The researchers said all clinical symptoms, which included the tell-tale signs of a fever and cough, subsided within three days.

The patients’ liver and lung function as well as blood oxygen levels were also found to have improved, signs they had fought off the virus.

The numbers of disease-fighting white blood cells, lymphocytes, also increased, and antibody levels remained high after CP transfusion, the researchers said.

Two of three patients who were hooked up to a ventilator to assist with breathing were taken off, and given oxygen delivered into the nose.

-Dailymail.

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/uk-usa-approve-use-of-blood-plasma-for-treatment-of-coronavirus-patients/

The Nigerian government is to approach China for debt relief as part of strategy to contain the looming recession induced by falling oil prices and coronavirus pandemic, even as it will not seek a suspension of interest payments from its Eurobond holders.

“We have not considered investors of our commercial paper,” Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed said by phone from Abuja, the capital. “If it happens anywhere, if it’s something that would work, then we will look at it, but right now we are looking at multilateral lenders.”

Ahmed said it’s unclear how a debt service moratorium, which was requested by African finance chiefs last month, could be sought from holders of Eurobonds, which are actively traded. Nigeria paid $771 million in interest on its Eurobonds last year compared with $329 million in debt service to multilateral creditors, according to the country’s Debt Management Office.

The government plans to hold talks with China to seek a deferral of interest payments on bilateral loans, she said.

Worst Recession

“We will talk to the Chinese. We will negotiate multilateral loans and bilateral loans and where we get accommodation we will take it,” said Ahmed, without saying how much the government expects to save in payments this year.

The government of President Muhammadu Buhari has asked for $7 billion in loans from multilateral creditors, including the International Monetary Fund, to allow the government to increase health spending as the Covid-19 virus spreads in Africa’s most populous country. Tumbling oil prices have slashed revenue to the continent’s top oil producer, which could face its worst recession in decades this year.

Nearly half of Nigeria’s outstanding external debt is with multilateral lenders, with the World Bank Group being its top creditor with $10.1 billion in loans. Beijing-based Export-Import Bank of China is the second largest single creditor with loans totaling $3.2 billion while Eurobonds account for $10.86 billion or 39% of external debt.

-Bloomberg

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/business-news/as-recession-looms-nigeria-seeks-debt-relief-from-china/

Federal Government of Nigeria has concluded plans to raise as much as $6.9 billion from multilateral lenders to offset the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy.

The country will seek $3.4 billion from the International Monetary Fund, $2.5 billion from the World Bank and a further $1 billion from the African Development Bank, Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed told reporters Monday in the capital, Abuja. The authorities have no plans to enter into an IMF progam, she said.

The government has started talks with multilateral lenders to suspend debt repayments for this year and next, Ahmed said.

-Bloomberg

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/business-news/nigeria-runs-to-imf-world-bank-adb-to-borrow-6-9-billion/

Coronavirus crisis proves communism is still a grave threat to the entire world. If Beijing had just been honest, the pandemic could be preventable.

As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, one fact is increasingly clear: The Chinese Communist Party caused this crisis.

From the moment the coronavirus emerged in central China, Beijing has acted in a way that made a pandemic possible and then inevitable. It covered up what was happening in Wuhan. It silenced whistleblowers who sought to warn the world. It stole medical supplies from other countries, even while claiming the sickness was no big deal.

At every stage, the Chinese Communist Party has lied. Now at least 50,000 people have died. And the number is growing by the minute.

Beijing’s culpability is the result of its oppression — its “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The only way to stop a spreading sickness is to spread information even faster, giving people and countries the facts and the time to prevent a pandemic. China’s rulers made that impossible. Starting in December, communist authorities cracked down on anyone talking about the coronavirus.

China’s censorship

When a brave doctor warned his peers online, he was summoned by police in the middle of the night and forced to write a “self-criticism” — a classic communist method of silencing dissenters that forces them to confess supposed crimes. When Chinese journalists wrote about the sickness, their work was censored. When average citizens took to social media to share the facts, they were silenced. Beijing did everything in its power to prevent the outside world from figuring out what was really going on.

The truth was terrifying, although largely unknown beyond China’s borders. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that China systematically hid the real number of sick people, as well as the number of deaths. Sure enough, in mid-January, Beijing still claimed that only a few dozen people were infected with the coronavirus. The real totals of people infected and deaths were likely far higher, as my organization was already hearing from dissidents within China.

Beijing’s lies lulled the world into a false sense of security. By concealing the extent of the coronavirus, China caused other countries to assume the situation was under control, or at least that they had more time to prepare. A senior White House official pointed out that Chinese data caused the medical community in the United States to think “this was serious, but smaller than anyone expected… we were missing a significant amount of the data.”

Ultimately, China’s incomplete picture led to insufficient plans in other countries. But Beijing’s omissions and lies didn’t just include the number of infected people. They also covered up the nature of the coronavirus itself. In doing so, Beijing violated international treaty obligations to which China is a signatory, including the International Health Regulations (2005).

If they had just been honest

Beijing denied until January 20th that human to human transmission was occurring. Yet at the same time, Chinese officials and state-owned companies were urgently acquiring bulk medical supplies —especially personal protective equipment like masks and gloves — from Australia, Europe, and around the world. Put simply, Beijing hoarded the world’s life-saving resources while falsely claiming that people’s lives weren’t at risk.

The results have been tragic. China’s actions made other countries less able to contain coronavirus outbreaks. In some cases, those outbreaks were perhaps already underway but unknown, because China lied about the sickness’ spread. By that point, a pandemic was only a matter of time.

Now the world is facing upheaval unseen since the Second World War. Whole countries are shut down. Borders are closed. Economies are unraveling. Governments are mobilizing for an extended struggle. Billions of people are terrified.

But all of this was preventable, if the Chinese Communist Party had just been honest.

If Beijing had allowed doctors in China to raise the alarm and contain the threat, the virus could have been stopped in its tracks.

If Beijing had accurately described how the virus spread, people from New York to New Delhi could have prepared accordingly.

If Beijing had given the real number of infected people and deaths, other countries would have recognized the danger, and taken necessary steps.

But Beijing wasn’t honest. It lied. It is lying still. As a result, more than a million people are sick, and millions could die before the year is out.

Their blood is on the Chinese Communist Party’s hands. If the coronavirus crisis proves anything, it’s that communism — its logic, its brutality, its incompetence — is still a grave threat to the entire world.

The sooner communism is swept into the dustbin of history, the safer we’ll all be.

-USATODAY – Marion Smith is executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter: @smithmarion


http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/coronavirus-crisis-hold-chinese-communist-party-responsible-by-marion-smith/

More people are staying indoors to avoid contact with people potentially infected by Covid-19. But in light of a recent report from the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that said RNA from the virus that causes Covid-19 was found in the Diamond Princess ship 17 days after its passengers had left, what are the risks of handling packages, groceries and what scientists call “high-touch” surfaces?

Does the cruise ship report imply that viruses survive up to 17 days on surfaces?

Dr Julia Marcus: A CDC investigation of the cruise ship found evidence of viral RNA in cabins that hadn’t yet been cleaned. But to be clear, that just means the virus was detectable – not that it was viable or that contact with those services would have been able to infect someone. (Editor’s note: RNA, or ribonucleic acid, carries the virus’s genetic information.)

Dr Akiko Iwasaki: It just means that there are parts of the virus that still remain. The virus needs many other components to be intact. If you have bits and pieces of RNA, that’s not going to make a virus, you need an entire intact genome. Just because you had a little piece of RNA doesn’t mean that there’s an infection.

How long can the virus survive on surfaces?

Marcus: The New England Journal of Medicine just published a study that tested how long the virus can remain stable on different kinds of surfaces within a controlled laboratory setting. They found that it was still detectable on copper for up to four hours, on cardboard for up to 24 hours, and on plastic and steel for up to 72 hours.

But it’s important to note that the amount of virus decreased rapidly over time on each of those surfaces. And so the risk of infection from touching them would probably decrease over time as well.

Could you become infected from just a single particle of coronavirus?

Iwasaki: There’s a certain amount of viral particle that you need to be exposed to become infected. If you just had one viral particle on your finger, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be infected. Some viruses are very potent, you only need like 10 particles to get infected, while others you [may] need millions. The fewer viral particles you’re exposed to, the less likely you’re going to get infected. That’s why the amount of virus on a surface is important.

How many people are being contaminated via surfaces as opposed to airborne particles or direct contact with an infected person?

Marcus: As far as we know right now, people are much more likely to be infected by close contact with an infected person than by touching a contaminated surface. That said, it’s still important to be conscious of what we’re touching, especially high-touch surfaces, and be careful about cleaning our hands after touching things. For example, public transit or grocery stores and places where there tend to be a lot of people.

Iwasaki: The virus is pretty stable on [materials] like plastic and steel – they can persist for a few days. So it’s very possible that someone who’s sick will deposit the virus on to the surface and then somebody else will touch it and touch their face.

Is there a risk of being infected by groceries and packages that we have delivered?

Marcus: It’s a low risk, but it’s possible that if someone is delivering a package to your house and they are sick, that may be a route for transmission. I would recommend that any time something new comes into your household, be conscious of washing your hands after handling it.

Iwasaki: The [virus’s] stability is pretty good on the cardboard. Once you get those packages, open them, quickly throw away the cardboard, wash your hands, and try to avoid touching your face. Take any measures that you can to minimize contact from the surface of the package to your face.

Is it possible the contents of a package could have been contaminated by whoever packed it?

Iwasaki: There’s definitely a possibility of contamination, but it’s much more likely that the outer cardboard itself will come into contact with a lot more people than what’s inside. And if it takes days to get to your home, whatever virus that was inside will be deactivated already.

Do you have any tips for cleaning surfaces?

Marcus: It’s good to routinely clean any high-touch surfaces, like door handles and toilets. Regular household cleaners are effective, including bleach solutions and alcohol solutions of at least 70% alcohol. If somebody in your household has been diagnosed with Covid-19, then cleaning and disinfection becomes much more important and should be done more frequently.

Iwasaki: The [Food and Drug Administration] has a list of home cleaning products that are known to kill Covid-19. This virus is an enveloped virus so it doesn’t survive well in soap and alcohol.

Dr Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunology at Yale University

Dr Julia Marcus, infectious disease epidemiologist and professor in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

-theguardian

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/news/how-long-coronavirus-live-on-different-surfaces/

A sex worker in Nelson Mandela Bay says she has no option but to work during the lockdown.

“The coronavirus has been bad for business. I never wanted to be a prostitute and I have thought of killing myself on numerous occasions, but I can’t end my life … my children need me.”

Those were the words of a Nelson Mandela Bay sex worker who asked not to be named.

The woman, 31, who was walking the streets of Central desperately looking for business, broke down in tears as she told her story.

She is originally from East London and said her father died when she was in grade 11. She fell pregnant a few years later.

She turned to prostitution to support herself and her child.

“The lockdown has affected me badly. The police arrest us, they beat us up, they shoot at us with rubber bullets and they chase our white clients away.

“That is why I’m working during the day, but standing here during the day is risky. I can’t take clients to St George’s Park, because there are thieves there that want to rob our clients.”

Standing opposite Rosebank College in Rink Street at 11am on Thursday morning, she started to cry as she said she wanted to be a teacher when she was growing up. If she could, she would return to school and study further.

“We aren’t getting any money because of the lockdown. I’m hungry right now. I don’t want to defy the president’s orders, but we never got food parcels so what else can I do?

“My boy is 10, and my girl is eight. They live with my mother in East London. Their father passed away. My mother doesn’t have a grant, but the children have a foster-care grant. It isn’t enough and life is so hard that I have thought of killing myself on numerous occasions,” she said.

But, she added, because she was sending money home to help support the children suicide was not an option.

Before walking away, the woman wiped her eyes and said: “I have to teach my children what’s right and what’s wrong. I can’t kill myself.”

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/entertainment/sex-worker-describes-desperate-struggle-to-survive-during-lockdown/

-Heraldlive

UK deaths from coronavirus could reach as many as 1,000 per day around the peak of the country’s epidemic, which could come around Easter Sunday, health secretary Matt Hancock has warned.

The health secretary’s dire admission was given at the opening of the new NHS Nightingale hospital to fight the Covid-19 outbreak in London.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has said he will remain in self-isolation due to a high temperature, despite completing his planned seven-day period, and the government’s proposal to give immunity certificates to people who have recovered from Covid-19 has been described as “dangerous” by a health expert because it could give people a “sense of false security” over the virus.

-Independent

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/coronavirus-uk-death-toll-may-rise-to-1000-daily-by-easter-says-health-secretary/

For decades, powerful Nigerians could ignore the government’s failure to invest adequately in the health-care system by seeking medical treatment abroad. The coronavirus pandemic means they can no longer escape.

Since Nigeria identified its first case in late February, President Muhammadu Buhari has responded by closing the borders and imposing a lockdown on two key cities and the state of Ogun, an industrial hub. Commercial flights and private jets have been grounded. Like most African countries, Nigeria is now largely cut off from the world.

The pandemic has forced much of Africa’s elite into a unique situation where it’s no longer possible to fly to the U.K., France or India to see a doctor, a practice that’s become commonplace even among the affluent middle class.

Buhari was widely criticized for spending more than five months in the U.K. in 2017 for an undisclosed ailment. Last year, Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo, recovered in Morocco from a stroke, while Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s former leader, died in a hospital in Singapore.

In Nigeria, the coronavirus has so far infected 174 people, including Abba Kyari, Buhari’s chief of staff, a man regarded as the second-most powerful in the country. Four out of 36 state governors and a son of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar have also tested positive. A former senior executive of the state oil company, Suleiman Achimugu, was the first Covid-19 fatality.

Dozens of senior public officials, including state governors and lawmakers, have gone into isolation. If they get sick, they will have to rely on a weak health system that is at risk of crumbling under the weight of a larger outbreak, according to Francis Faduyile, head of the Nigerian Medical Association, an umbrella group for doctors.

“The health system is not strong enough,” Faduyile said by phone from Lagos. “Over the years, it’s been denied normal funding and things are not where they’re supposed to be. If the burden of the coronavirus is added, it may be too heavy; it may actually cause a total collapse.”

Among Nigeria’s registered health professionals are 75,000 doctors, 180,709 nurses and 25,000 pharmacists, according to the health ministry. With 0.5% hospital beds per 1,000 people and a population of roughly 200 million, that’s far below thresholds set by the World Health Organization. Only five laboratories are able to test for the virus.

Health spending at around 5% of the budget in the past decade falls short of the African Union’s recommended minimum of 15% and has been mostly focused on recurrent spending, with little capital investment made over the years, according to BudgiT, a civil-society group that tracks government expenditure. A National Health Act that came into effect in 2015 and requires that 1% of government revenue is set aside for basic health care has yet to be implemented.

Even those numbers may not tell the whole story as officials of the medical association say about half of all registered doctors have emigrated to the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia and other parts of the world.

While Faduyile said there’s still time for the government to institute large-scale preventative measures, a wider coronavirus outbreak would leave everyone in Africa’s most populous country — the rich, the poor and the middle class — scrambling for service in poorly equipped hospitals.

“It’s going to be a lesson for those who think they can neglect the health system,” Faduyile said. “The highest of the government officials, some of them will be infected, and they’ll have no option but to get local treatment.”

—Bloomberg

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/coronavirus-travel-restriction-nigerian-big-men-forced-to-use-neglected-hospitals/

China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.

The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.

The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said.

The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.

Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.

Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.

“The medical community made — interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”

China is not the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.

“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.

“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”

— Bloomberg

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/coronavirus-us-accuses-china-of-concealing-scope-of-epidemic/

MTN Group Limited has concluded plans to reduce its majority stake in the wireless carrier’s Nigerian business, though turmoil caused by the coronavirus may require the sale to be done in smaller chunks than anticipated.

The impact of the pandemic on international financial markets doesn’t change the importance of selling part of the 79% shareholding to local investors, Chief Financial Officer Ralph Mupita said in an interview. However, the rest of a three-to-five year plan to dispose of 25-billion rand ($1.4 billion) of assets will probably take a back seat for now, he said.

“In Nigeria we still want to do part of our retail offer, even if it’s a smaller part of the total planned sale,” Mupita said by phone. “We are applying our minds to doing this at the moment.”

MTN is disposing of part of its largest division after a series of disputes with Nigerian authorities, most recently over tax payments and the withdrawal of cash from the country. The plan is to sell about a 15% stake to local investors, reducing MTN’s ownership to about 64%. MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd. was listed in Lagos last year, and is the country’s second-biggest publicly traded company.

Nigeria is MTN’s biggest market, accounting for a third of overall 2019 revenue and almost 40% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The Johannesburg-based company is also the biggest provider of telecom services in the country, with almost 69 million customers, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission.

Share Rally

The drastic fall in oil prices, hurting major producers including Nigeria, and the outbreak of the coronavirus has weighed on MTN’s share price, which hit 15-year lows last week. The stock has since rallied for six straight days, and traded as much as 21% higher in Johannesburg on Tuesday — the biggest jump in two decades.

“We of course have no visibility on how all of this could play out, but the business currently has a resilient balance sheet and is highly cash generative, with most of our business coming from pre-paid contracts,” Mupita said.

MTN’s cash position was bolstered by the sale of 14 billion rand in assets last year, including stakes in telecom-tower companies in certain African markets. Some of that was paid in dollars, which provides a currency hedge against the weakening rand, the CFO said. MTN also has a credit facility that can be accessed if needed, he added.

MTN expects an increase in data usage as more and more of its markets go into lockdown due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

“We want to make sure that our networks have resilience and capacity,” Mupita said. “We are looking at where we can drive broader coverage.”

-Bloomberg

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/business-news/mtn-nigeria-begins-plan-to-sell-stake-amid-market-uncertainty/

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown, Prudential Zenith Life Insurance is rolling out a range of services to help customers cope with the lockdown.

The new services include a range of additional COVID-19 insurance cover enhancements, without additional premium charges, and a waiver for ‘pandemic’ exclusions as contained in its policy language.

In line with the recent pronouncement of the federal government, the company will be temporarily locked down and has therefore set up a dedicated claims team with remote working capabilities, to enable customers make and receive claims virtually.

According to the statement from the insurance company, the claims procedure will be simplified to allow customers make claims through the WhatsApp channel.

This development makes it possible for customers to buy insurance products without any physical interface with sales personnel or visit to a physical branch.

Commenting on the changes, Prudential Africa CEO Matt Lilley said, “we realise this is a worrying time for everyone and we want to reassure you that protecting the health and wellness of our customers, employees and partners is our primary concern.

“At Prudential, we have been delivering promises for over 170 years and this time will be no different. I am proud of the measures we are announcing today and I know that they will provide our customers additional peace of mind.”

He added that the waiting periods for new cover have been reduced, and the company is providing additional training and incentives to sales personnel to continue providing advice and access to insurance, even as they work remotely.

He encouraged Nigerians to stay safe and adhere to the directives from the Ministry of health, Nigerian centre for disease control (NCDC) and other relevant authorities.

“We are going to get through these trying times together” he assured.

What you should know

Prudential Zenith Life Insurance was born when Prudential Plc, one of the oldest and most strongly capitalized life insurance companies in the world, acquired a majority stake in Zenith Life Assurance.

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/business-news/prudential-zenith-life-rolls-out-services-for-customers-during-covid-19-lockdown/

As foreign reserve faces severe pressure from depleting crude oil revenue, Nigerian banks are initiating new measures to stem the impact. One of these measures is cut in customers’ spending abroad.

The need for this decision is further reinforced by the coronavirus pandemic and a slump in oil prices that have triggered concerns of likely shortage of the U.S. currency.

Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, the country’s biggest lender by market value, reduced international spending limits on its naira-denominated cards to $500 from $3,000 last week, while Zenith Bank Plc reduced the limit to $1,000 from $3,000. Renaissance Capital expects others to follow as the companies try to conserve dollar liquidity.

It’s a “precautionary measure as we do not know how long oil prices will remain low,” Adesoji Solanke, a director of frontier and sub-Saharan banks equity research at Renaissance Capital in London, said in emailed response to questions. “There is a fair probability that the central bank opts to contain the depreciation of the naira, which implies there is a real risk of some foreign-exchange restrictions being imposed.”

The Abuja-based central bank of Africa’s biggest crude producer devalued the local currency by 4% to 380 per dollar this month as prices for the commodity plunged. Afrinvest West Africa expects the devaluation is not enough to ease pressure on the local currency and is forecasting an exchange rate of 400 naira to the dollar.

In 2015 and 2016 when the oil price and output crashed, the central bank introduced controls to reduce dollar demand, prompting many lenders to either cut or suspend foreign payments for customers using their naira cards.

That said, we expect the 2-week holiday to shift the demand for FX to the parallel market. Thus we expect an upward pressure in parallel market rates.

On the flip side, we think the 2-week break would help the CBN conserve scarce dollar resources, particularly in the face of sustained pressure in the I&E window owing to rising capital outflows. We note the CBN intervention in the I&E window jumped to a record high in March, as global risk aversion for EM/FM assets made FPIs cut their exposure to Nigerian assets.

Depleting reserves recently compelled the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to discontinue its sales of foreign exchange to bureaux de change, advising them to source their foreign exchange from autonomous market.

-Bloomberg/Media Issues

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/business-news/depleting-dollar-forces-nigerian-banks-to-cut-customers-spending-abroad/

As the coronavirus rages across the world, rural and poor areas in various countries have so far not been affected. In Africa, including Nigeria, not a single rural and poor area has been affected, as infected areas are limited to urban areas so far.

In the United States, areas affected so far are mainly the large urban areas as more than a third of U.S. counties have yet to report a single positive test result for COVID-19 infections, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.

Data compiled by John Hopkins University shows that 1,297 counties have no confirmed cases of COVID-19 out of 3,142 counties nationwide. Of the counties without positive tests, 85% are in rural areas — from predominantly white communities in Appalachia and the Great Plains to majority Hispanic and Native American stretches of the American Southwest — that generally have less everyday contact between people that can help transmit the virus.

At the same time, counties with zero positive tests for COVID-19 have a higher median age and higher proportion of people older than 60 — the most vulnerable to severe effects of the virus — and far fewer intensive care beds should they fall sick. Median household income is lower too, potentially limiting health care options.

The demographics of these counties hold major implications as the Trump administration develops guidelines to rate counties by risk of the virus spreading, empowering local officials to revise social distancing orders that have sent much of the U.S. economy into freefall. President Donald Trump has targeted a return to a semblance of normalcy for the economy by Easter Sunday, April 12.

Experts in infectious disease see an opportunity in slowing the spread of coronavirus in remote areas of the country that benefit from “natural” social distancing and isolation, if initial cases are detected and quarantined aggressively. That can buy rural health care networks time to provide robust care and reduce mortality.

But they also worry that sporadic testing for coronavirus could be masking outbreaks that — left unattended — might overwhelm rural health networks.

“They’ll be later to get the infection, they’ll be later to have their epidemics,” said Christine K. Johnson, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis. “But I don’t think they’re going to be protected because there’s nowhere in the U.S. that’s isolated.”

Counties that have zero confirmed COVID-19 cases could raise a red flag about inadequate testing, she said.

“I hope the zeros are really zeros — I worry that they’re not doing enough testing in those regions because they’re not thinking they’re at risk,” she said.

In New Mexico, a state with 2 million residents spanning an area the size of Italy, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has moved aggressively to contain the coronavirus’ spread with a statewide school shutdown and prohibition on most gatherings of over five people.

Nearly half of the state’s 33 counties are free of any positive coronavirus cases. New Mexico is among the top five states in coronavirus testing per capita, though some virus-free counties aren’t yet equipped with specialized testing sites beyond samplings by a handful of doctor offices.

Torrance County Manager Wayne Johnson said plans are being prepared for the first three dedicated COVID-19 testing sites, in the high-desert county of 15,000 residents that spans an area three times the size of Rhode Island.

A statewide stay-at-home order is keeping many residents from commuting to jobs in adjacent Bernalillo County, the epicenter of the state’s COVID-19 infections, with 93 confirmed cases out of a state government tally of 208 as of Saturday night.

“We don’t have any test sites open, and part of that is that we don’t have any needs for the test yet,” Johnson said. Still, Johnson said he worries that an outbreak could overwhelm the county’s sole local medical clinic and an all-volunteer corps of emergency medical technicians.

The state´s first of two coronavirus-related deaths occurred last Sunday within a southern oil-producing region in Eddy County, where two other positive tests have surfaced. A man in his late-70s died shortly after arriving at a hospital in Artesia, and tested positive postmortem. He had previously visited two health clinics, and at the hospital five staff were quarantined for possible exposure even though they wore face masks.

State Deputy Epidemiologist Chad Smelser said health officials have continued to painstakingly retrace the steps of infected patients and notify people who came into contact with them. There are dozens of connections per infection on average.

“We know the details of his prior visits in the health care system,” Smelser said of the deceased Eddy County patient. “We’ve worked with those physicians to assess their exposure. And we do not believe that he acquired it in the health care setting.”

State health officials say it is unclear how many people have been tested for coronavirus in each county.

Medical experts say uneven testing patterns across the country make it difficult to gauge whether remote areas are really better off.

“It’s a fundamental unknown,” said Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University in Texarkana. “I think there is some truth to that notion that there are lower infection rates out there” in rural areas.

He said he fears for homeless populations and undocumented migrants. ¨We hope they stay safe. Those would be hard places to get rid of the coronavirus,¨ Neuman said.

Complaints that testing is not readily available extend to the crossroads town of Crossett in southern Arkansas, where surrounding Ashley County has no confirmed coronavirus cases.

Disabled veteran Marty Zollman, 42, of Crossett says his wife, a clothing store clerk, and teenage daughter sought coronavirus testing this week for fever and flu-like symptoms at a local health clinic and were turned away.

“We might be contagious, but no one will test her,” Zollman said of his wife, Janet, who was awaiting surgery for breast cancer. “They keep turning her down. They don’t have a source of testing.”

He lashed out at Trump for indicating that testing is readily available. “Now it’s time for me to call his bluff. If he’s got the equipment … he’s got to provide it,” Zollman said.

In New Mexico, along the southernmost finger of the Rocky Mountains, Mora Valley Community Health Services and a companion agency attend to elderly patients living in extreme poverty in Mora County, where there have been no confirmed COVID-19 infections and few if any people tested.

With a population of 4,500 that is more than 80% Latino, the county is among the economically poorest in the nation. Average combined household income is $27,000.

“There’s elderly out there that have dementia, who don’t have a family … who eat out of cans,” said Julián Barela, CEO of Community Health Services, which ordinarily serves a steady stream of Medicaid and Medicare patients with health, dental and behavior health services.

Under new state directives, the clinic has scuttled all non-emergency appointments — most of its caseload — to comply with a measure designed to conserve dwindling protective gear such as masks, gloves and gowns for health care workers, Barela said. The clinic has yet to see a patient with telltale symptoms of coronavirus worth testing.

Barela said it has been alarming to turn away patients who feel they need attention as new federal grant money arrives.

“We don’t have an emergency backlog, it doesn’t seem reasonable that we’re just shut down,” he said. “We should not operate the same as New York. There is no reason for it.”

-AP/Media Issues

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/news/no-coronavirus-in-rural-poor-areas-of-the-world-so-far/

With social distancing the new normal, one lingering issue for many people centers on sex: is it safe to have sex and what precautions are needed because of the contagious novel coronavirus?

The New York City Department of Health (NYCDOH) has issued a set of guidelines on the issue.

There’s no way to know how long the pandemic will last, and because sex is a natural way to express your love for another person and a proven way to physically and mentally relax, the NYC guidelines remind us that a person infected with the virus can spread it to others within six feet if they cough or sneeze. So getting frisky can be risky.

The virus also can be transmitted through direct contact with the infected person’s saliva or mucous. To date, there have been no reports of other types of coronavirus being transmitted through semen or vaginal fluids.

The NYCDOH mentions one type of sex that is totally safe, and that is masturbation. But people are warned to wash their hands to eradicate the COVID-19 virus.

For people who are determined to have physical intimacy with another person, the safest partner is the one you live with, says the NYCDOH. “Having close contact, including sex, with only a small circle of people, helps prevent spreading COVID-19.”

The guidelines point out that kissing can easily pass the virus from one person to another even in your close circle of contacts. They also recommend wearing condoms and dental dams, and re-emphasize washing thoroughly before and after sex.

The recommendations include skipping sex if you or your partner is not feeling well.

“If you or your partner has COVID-19, avoid sex and especially kissing,” says the NYCDOH. Also, they add that if you or your partner has an underlying medical condition such as lung or heart disease, diabetes, cancer or a weakened immune system, don’t have sex.

-Newsmax

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/health/how-coronavirus-affects-sex/

The world is awash in crude oil, and is slowly running out of places to put it as global oil storage tanks have been stretched beyond their capacities. This is caused by the price and production war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, exacerbated by current low oil demand due to COVID-19.

Massive, round storage tanks in places like Trieste, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates are filling up. Over 80 huge tankers, each holding up to 80 million gallons, are anchored off Texas, Scotland and elsewhere, with no particular place to go.

This chaotic mismatch in supply and demand has benefited consumers, who have watched gasoline prices slide lower.

The world doesn’t need all this oil. The coronavirus pandemic has strangled the world’s economies, silenced factories and grounded airlines, cutting the need for fuel. But Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest producer, is locked in a price war with rival Russia and is determined to keep raising production.

“For the first time in history we are seeing the likelihood that the market will test storage capacity limits within the near future,” said Antoine Halff, a founding partner of Kayrros, a market research firm. As storage space becomes harder to find, the prices, which have already fallen more than half this year, could drop even further. And companies could be forced to shut off their wells.

And it has been a field day for anyone eager to snap up cheap oil, put it someplace and wait for a day when it’ll be worth more.

While the coronavirus epidemic threatens to bust parts of the United States oil industry, Mr. Barsamian’s business, which finds places to park unwanted fuel, is thriving, at least for now.

“We usually do about two storage deals a day,” said Mr. Barsamian, who runs a company in Princeton, N.J., called the Tank Tiger, a nod to the local university’s mascot. “We have done about 120 in the last couple of weeks.”

Mr. Barsamian matches clients like commodity traders or refiners that have oil they want to store with tank farm owners and others who have places to put it, collecting a fee of 1 cent per barrel a month from the latter.

People in the energy industry say they have never seen changes happening at the speed and magnitude that are occurring because of the coronavirus.

-NYT

http://www.mediaissuesng.com/oil-gas-power/over-supply-stretches-global-oil-storage-tanks-beyond-limit/