₦airaland Forum

The French Minister for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness, Mr Franck Riester, has said the French government will support Nigeria through its foreign policy in supporting cultural and creative industries in partner countries.
A statement titled ‘French minister delegate for foreign trade & economic attractiveness visits AIM Group to boost Nigeria-France relationship’, said he spoke during his official visit to the AIM Group as part of his first official visit to Nigeria to foster intra-cultural relationship between France and Nigeria.
He said this would be through set-up like the ‘Solidarity fund for innovative projects’, which made it possible to establish sustainable assistance for many cultural projects geared towards creating employment opportunities and economic development.
The statement said Riester acknowledged the resilient spirit of the new generation of Nigerians who despite the COVID-19 pandemic had continued to dominate the music and movie production segment.
According to him, the sector has witnessed massive returns, impressive international successes, and global commendations as Nigerian cinema and music industry have grown to become an inspiration to other countries.
Speaking during the Visit, Co-founder, Wazobia Media, a subsidiary of the AIM Group, Tatiana Nouri, expressed gratitude to the French minister for the support from the French government through capacity building initiatives.
He said , which would positively impact the continued growth of the Nigerian creative industry and further strengthen the ties between Nigeria and France.

A U.S. panel will meet again next week to discuss whether the pause on the use of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine should continue, after delaying a vote on the matter earlier this week.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory panel will meet on April 23, a top U.S. health official said on Friday.
The continued pause "will allow additional time to review any additional cases that might come in, and for (the panel) to conduct a complete risk assessment and to evaluate the emerging science," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a Friday news conference.
U.S. health regulators recommended earlier this week that use of the J&J vaccine be paused after reports of six cases of rare brain blood clots in women, out of some 7 million people who have received the shot in the United States.
The advisory panel on Wednesday called for more data before making a decision on how and whether to resume use of the one-shot vaccine.
Walensky said supply of COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc will remain strong, even as administering of J&J's vaccine remains on hold.
"We continue to work with pharmacies, states and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) to make sure the vaccine supply remains robust across the country," she said.
Reuters reported on Friday that rich countries are stocking up on Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots as concerns mount about vaccines from J&J and AstraZeneca Plc.
Walensky said she is very concerned about rising U.S. COVID-19 cases driven by the relaxing of state restrictions to curb virus transmission and the spread of more contagious new coronavirus variants of COVID-19.
The U.S. seven-day average daily case count is 69,500, with hospitalizations up 5% to 8%, and daily deaths have increased for the third day in a row, Walensky added.

With this challenge, USAID will offer $3million in funding and technical assistance to youth-led companies and mid-stage companies (those having an existing customer base of more than 1,000 people) in Nigeria in order to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on Nigeria’s agri-food systems.
In a statement, USAID says: "Nigeria is presently confronted with a food security crisis that is deepened by COVID-19 global pandemic and its negative consequences on the food value chain in the country.
"The pandemic has severely affected an already weak agri-food system and value chain across the nation.
"Millions of people, and especially the most vulnerable households, are threatened with hunger and malnutrition due to the socio-economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and large-scale disruption to food production, processing, distribution, and marketing systems.

Regeneron will seek U.S. approval for its Covid-19 antibody cocktail as a preventative treatment after a trial showed it helped reduce the risk of symptomatic infections in households where someone else is ill, the U.S. drugmaker said on Monday.
REGEN-COV, as the combination shot of casirivimab and imdevimab is called, reduced the overall risk of progressing to symptomatic Covid-19 by 31 percent, and by 76 percent after the third day. The trial also demonstrated that it shortened symptom duration and markedly lowered viral levels, Regeneron said in a statement.
Regeneron has enlisted Switzerland's Roche and its massive biotech facility in South San Francisco to help make around 2 million doses annually, a substantial amount although only a fraction of what would be needed to cover the people who get the illness, which is currently infecting about 3.5 million people weekly worldwide.
The drug has emergency U.S. approval for mild to moderate Covid-19 patients, and the companies are hoping the latest trial convinces regulators to expand its deployment. European regulators have voiced some support and are letting countries decide if they want to use it.
"These data pave the way for REGEN-COV to be used before patients become symptomatic, with a more convenient subcutaneous administration," Katharine Bar, co-principal investigator and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania hospital, said in Regeneron's release.
Regeneron said its trial met primary and key secondary endpoints: Beyond reducing symptomatic infection risk, the total number of weeks patients experienced symptoms was nearly halved (45 percent) with REGEN-COV, and the viral burden was cut by 90 percent-plus, potentially helping halt the disease's spread.
Regeneron booked around $260 million in U.S. government orders for the drug in the first quarter. Roche has not given financial projections for sales outside the United States.

Dr Anthony Fauci thanked America’s healthcare workers who “every single day put themselves at risk” during the pandemic, even as he acknowledged that PPE shortages had contributed to the deaths of more than 3,600 of them.
“We rightfully refer to these people without hyperbole – that they are true heroes and heroines,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. The deaths of so many health workers from Covid-19 are “a reflection of what healthcare workers have done historically, but putting themselves in harm’s way, by living up to the oath they take when they become physicians and nurses,” said Fauci.
The Guardian and Kaiser Health News have tracked healthcare workers deaths throughout the pandemic in the Lost on the Frontline database. More than 3,600 health worker deaths have been tallied in the database, which is considered the most authoritative accounting in the country.
Personal protective equipment – including gloves, gowns and critical masks – have been in short supply since the pandemic began and heightened the toll. The US is the world’s largest importer of PPE, which made it especially vulnerable to the demand shock and export restrictions that hit the global market last spring.
“During the critical times when there were shortages was when people had to use whatever was available to them,” said Fauci. “I’m sure that increased the risk of getting infected among healthcare providers.”
Shortages were compounded by the federal government’s failure to maintain a national stockpile of personal protective equipment, and the Trump administration’s refusal to order more domestic manufacturing of PPE. That left health workers to use trash bags as gowns, to reuse N95s for weeks, and at times go totally without gloves.
The shortages led to health worker protests, who said working amid the pandemic without equipment left them like “sheep going to slaughter”. Nina Forbes, a nurse at an assisted living facility, was forced to wear a trashbag at times, according to her daughter, and later died. A year into the pandemic, gowns and gloves remain in short supply, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
More than 555,000 Americans have died in the Covid-19 pandemic, with many more suffering the long-term symptoms of Covid-19.

Mr Biobelemoye-Joy Josiah, President, Medical and Health Workers' Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), has appealed to Nigerians not to have any negative thoughts about the ongoing AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination in the country.
Josiah made the appeal while speaking with newsmen after he took the first jab of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at MHWUN headquarters on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said that Nigerians, especially the health workers, should avail themselves of the opportunity presented by the ongoing AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination.
"The vaccination is the only assured and available way of protecting health workers who are in the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
"Health workers, having lost many personnel across the world need to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, since they are the all-important soldiers to winning the fight against the pandemic.
"I have just taken my jab of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and I feel good," he said.
Josiah, who was also the Chairman, Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) debunked the speculation that the vaccine was made specifically to depopulate Africa and all other conspiracy theories.
He added that, certainly I have come to take this to tell all health workers especially members of JOHESU that it is not harmful to anybody.
"The initial fear that the vaccine is made specifically to depopulate Africa and all others are conspiracy theories.
"But we are witnesses to the fact that the Europeans have used themselves as the guinea pig so what's the reason for fear.
"We should come out and take the first and second jab so we can be 100 percent clear.

While India has suspended vaccine deliveries, which should prevent Nigeria from receiving several million doses as planned at the end of March, the country announced this week that it was making progress in the development of its own vaccine. In January, Abuja released $ 25 million to develop a local vaccine response. For the time being, two vaccine candidates are being developed according to the presidential task force set up by the federal state.
Boss Mustapha, the head of the presidential task force responsible for managing the pandemic, gives few details on the two vaccines developed by Nigerian scientists. We only know that clinical trials and certifications are still to come.
But the announcement aims in the official's words to " boost the morale and image of the medical industry " in the country. Nigeria, which released $ 25 million in January to develop a vaccine, is also exploring the possibility of producing it under license, a bit like India is doing with AstraZeneca.
The country has certain industrial capacities and could, like Morocco with Sinopharm, embark on large-scale production. This desire to become a producer is all the more evident given that the Covax initiative intended to supply vaccines to developing countries is in the dark, while India has decided to stop its exports, in order to provide first its people.
Aubuja has so far received four of the sixteen million doses planned. Nigeria's ambition is to eventually vaccinate 140 of its 200 million inhabitants.

LOS ANGELES — Researchers at Stanford University said Saturday that they had found at least one case of a new coronavirus variant first detected in India in Northern California.
The new variant has two mutations, including one found in the California strain, in the spiky protein that the virus latches onto, according to Stanford Health Care spokesperson Lisa Kim. The variant was found in a patient from the San Francisco Bay Area by the school's Clinical Virology Laboratory.
"We believe this is the first described case with this variant in the United States," she said in an emailed statement.
The variant was first detected last month by Indian health officials, The Associated Press reported. Cases in India had been decreasing across the country since September but started to creep back up through the winter. More than 47,000 new infections were detected in a 24-hour span, including 275 deaths, in March, according to the AP.
Covid-19 rates have been decreasing across California this spring following a deadly winter surge that started in late November and didn't ease up until after the new year. The drop in cases has allowed some of the state's most populous counties, including Los Angeles, to begin relaxing restrictions and gradually reopen the economy.
California has recorded more coronavirus cases than any state in the country, with over 3.5 million known infections and at least 58,000 deaths as of Saturday, according to the department of health.

If you thought the pandemic was over in the US, think again. After almost three months of steady decline, the number of daily new cases of COVID-19 across the nation is rising. In several states, led by Michigan, the number of people in hospitals is also climbing.
That leaves the US at a critical juncture, experts warn. Even as the vaccine rollout picks up speed, the reopening of businesses, including bars and restaurants in many states, increased travel, a widespread sense of COVID fatigue, plus the spread of more transmissible and deadly variants, means that the US could be at the start of a fourth coronavirus surge.
“I am going to pause here, I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” a visibly shaken Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said at a White House COVID-19 briefing on Monday. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared.”
Health officials on Monday urged Americans to continue getting vaccinated, wearing masks, social distancing, and following CDC travel guidelines to prevent a fourth surge.
“We really need to hold on to the public health measures as we get more and more people — from 2- to 3-plus million people — vaccinated every day,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “It will be a race between the vaccine and what’s going on with the dynamics of the outbreak. We can win this by just hanging in there a bit longer."
After a steep decline in new COVID-19 cases from the start of January, daily new cases across the nation began to level off and then ticked upward last week. Another key indicator of a renewed surge, the positive percentage of daily COVID-19 tests, has been rising for about three weeks.
Surges in the number of people in the hospital and daily reported COVID-19 deaths typically lag behind rises in cases by a few weeks.
“When we see that uptick in cases, what we’ve seen before is that things really have a tendency to surge, and surge big,” Walensky said. “We know that cases can sometimes be a week or two behind the behavior that leads to those cases — the mixing that leads to those cases — we know that travel is up, and I just worry that we will see the surges that we saw over the summer and over the winter again.”

ABUJA, March 25 (Reuters) - Nigeria’s state oil firm is spending up to $315 million a month on fuel subsidies for consumers, a burden that is becoming untenable, its head said on Thursday.
Nigeria deregulated its downstream oil sector a year ago, after the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a collapse in the global price of oil, its main export.
That ended a system of fuel subsidies that had helped keep the lid on simmering social unrest for decades. But the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) picked up the tab after the government made it the country’s sole petrol importer.
Its managing director, Mele Kyari, said NNPC was paying a market price of 234 naira a litre for petrol and selling at a pump price of 162.
That added up to a cost to the company of between 100 billion-120 billion naira ($262 million-$315 million) a month.
“NNPC may no longer be in a position to carry that burden because we cannot continue to carry it in our books,” Kyari told reporters in the capital Abuja.
Despite the cost to NNPC, pump prices have risen by around 30% since last March, helping to drive rising social unrest in a country where jobs are scarce and attacks by a patchwork of militant groups have turned some regions into near-anarchy.
Kyari said rising oil prices since last year have increased the cost of petrol imports, stoking inflation and creating some social unrest, issues that were being discussed with labour unions.
Efforts were continuing to create a system under which consumers could pay the actual petrol price without getting exploited.
Nigeria, Africa’s top oil exporter, has made producing its own fuel a priority for years but efforts to revamp its refineries have failed, leaving it almost entirely reliant on imports.
NNPC said it recorded a trading surplus of 80.12% to 24.19 billion naira in December from a month earlier.

In her maiden speech to the World Trade Organization (WTO) February 15 as director-general — immediately after she made history as the first woman and first African to head the global organisation — Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala made a refreshing appeal to members to reject vaccine nationalism and protectionism.
She also outlined a “third way” to ensure a more equitable access to vaccines. Was that the first beam of hope to “rebrand the WTO” and turn it into “an instrument for inclusive economic growth and sustainable development”, as she put it? Sadly, no.
The former finance minister of Nigeria, who spent the longest part of her career at the World Bank, was falling back on the worn chestnut of “facilitating technology transfer within the framework of multilateral rules”. This would, according to her, encourage research and innovation while allowing licensing agreements to help scale up production of medical products.
She singled out AstraZeneca, which is using the Serum Institute of India (SII) to produce its vaccine, and Johnson & Johnson (which is yet to do any licensing) as stellar examples.
Mention of trips, WTO’s stifling agreement on protecting intellectual property rights, was scrupulously avoided as also the India-South Africa proposal for waiver of such rights during the pandemic.
The proposal has garnered wide support among the developing country members of WTO although Europe, the United States and other rich states have vigorously attacked it. There are troubling questions about the licensing model which is allowing sii to charge poor countries in Africa more than double the price it charges developed nations, as this column has been pointing out.
It is baffling that Okonjo-Iweala, who till recently was chair of the board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is unaware that licensing hardly ensures equitable access. Licensing is clearly the bedrock of what she believes will bring about vaccine availability for poor nations, and is hardly restrained in her praise for pharma companies, which she says “are already ahead of us”.
Companies, she explained to sceptical journalists after her address, would be supported with WTO rules by using the flexibilities under trips.
The flexibilities are problematic not only because the processes are labyrinthine but also because countries that use these face censure. Even emergency regulations and compulsory licences invoked by some countries to fight the pandemic have been slammed by rich nations.
Yet, the new WTO chief has made her position clear and undermined the case for a trips waiver. One example is an opinion piece I came across in the Jakarta Post by the EU ambassador to Indonesia as a rejoinder to the paper’s editorial justifying the waiver. The ambassador used Okonjo-Iweala’s proposed “third way” to dismiss the arguments.
In a subsequent speech at WTO, Okonjo-Iweala did acknowledge that a growing number of countries were backing the demand for a trips waiver and that the dialogue is intensifying.
In the interim, members should “walk and chew gum” by focusing on the immediate needs of the huge number of poor countries that has received no vaccines as yet, she said. But the damage has been done. Even if theoretically the WTO chiefs wield no power, they exercise authority and influence. Given her background and dual nationality, Okonjo-Iweala is a figure to reckon with.

(CNN)A top health official warned the US could see a surge in Covid-19 infections if Americans let up on restrictions now. He argued, however, that it was entirely avoidable. That was Monday. On Tuesday, Indiana and Virginia unveiled plans to loosen mitigation measures anyway, joining at least a dozen other states that had already done so since the start of the month.
"The continued relaxation of prevention measures while cases are still high and while concerning variants are spreading rapidly throughout the United States is a serious threat to the progress we have made as a nation," said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a White House briefing.
It wasn't the first time Walensky had brought up such concerns and a chorus of other health experts have made a similar point: While vaccination numbers continue to climb, safety measures will be critical in the coming weeks to help curb another possible surge as dangerous variants spread across the country.
"It's really very much a race," Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN's Christina Maxouris. "It could go either way," he said. Hotez added that a combination of relaxing measures, allowing people to travel and new variants circulating in the country all threatened success.
In Indiana, a face-covering mandate will become a state mask advisory in most public places from April 6, Gov. Eric Holcomb said Tuesday. Decisions about venue capacity will be in the hands of local officials, and customers in restaurants, bars and nightclubs will no longer be required to be seated. In Virginia, indoor and outdoor gathering limits will increase and certain sports and entertainment venues will be able to operate with extra capacity.

AstraZeneca vaccine faces another setback after independent board questions trial data

The coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca is facing yet another setback.
On Tuesday, an independent review board of experts appointed by the National Institutes of Health said the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company may have only used partial data when it announced the results from its vaccine trial. The unusual rebuke from health officials follows a series of missteps and false starts in AstraZeneca’s rollout of the vaccine.
Anthony S. Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the concerns raised by the board an “unforced error” on AstraZeneca’s part, saying the shot “is very likely a good vaccine.” The company said it would “immediately engage” with health officials to discuss the most up-to-date efficacy data and promised a more detailed analysis within 48 hours of the vaccine it developed with Oxford University.

A cancer research company, Yemaachi Biotech has identified two new variants of the Covid-19 virus which they say is of much concern.
In a Twitter post, they revealed that the two variants, B.1 and B.1.525 have been in circulation in Ghana since March 2020.
The B.1 variant, first identified in Morocco and Algeria has been linked to increased transmissibility.
According to Dr Yaw Bediako, an immunologist and Research Fellow at the West Africa Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana, the B.1 variant has not shown any signs of being able to breach the vaccine-induced immunity.
“Currently there is no evidence that this variant is capable of evading vaccine induced immunity. We must keep vaccinating at a high rate to minimize the likelihood that such a variant will emerge,” he said.
However, concerning the B.1.525 variant which was first identified in Nigeria, data gathered at the research center shows it is more prevalent in the Northern and Western regions of Ghana.
It added that the variant has mutations that may allow the virus to partly evade the immune system.
Explaining further, Public Health Expert and Adjunct Professor at the New York University, Nana Kofi Quakyi said, “the implication here is that if you previously had Covid-19, the variant may be able to get around the antibodies your body produced in response to the infection. So you can get reinfected. We don’t yet have data on how this particular variant responds to the different vaccines.”
Nana Kofi Quakyi stated that the identification of these new variants was “a reminder of the critical importance of broad, regular genomic surveillance for SARSCoV2 variants in Covid-19 patients.”
He thus called on government to invest more money towards that effort to “expand its scope and frequency because the information it provides is so important for the vaccine drive.”
He added, “We really need to double down on infection control, especially enforcement of limits on social gatherings!” and called for a media briefing on the new variants soon.
“Those briefings are a core part of risk communication, and they should be scheduled/frequent. Detection of new variants should be an obvious prompt to hold one,” he said in a Twitter post.

Medical experts in the United States are trying to assuage fears that Covid-19 vaccines may be unsafe after several European countries suspended AstraZeneca’s shot following reports of blood clots among some recipients.
On Tuesday, Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania became the latest countries to join a growing list of nations suspending the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford shot over blood clot concerns. Germany, France, Italy and Spain all said on Monday they would also stop administering the shot.
The European Medicines Agency, which evaluates drug safety for the EU, called a meeting Thursday to review the findings. So far, it’s maintained that the benefits of the shot when it comes to preventing hospitalizations and deaths still “outweigh the risks of side effects.” The World Health Organization agreed, urging countries on Wednesday to continue using AstraZeneca’s shots.
Without the results from the EMA’s forthcoming meeting, it’s hard to say whether the vaccines are causing the reported blood clots, medical experts in the U.S. told CNBC, but the pharmaceutical giant already has a public relations mess on its hands. Some doctors in the U.S. are worried that the European nations are prematurely responding to political pressure and safety fears, and it will take extensive efforts to rebuild trust in the vaccine if it is allowed back online.
“There’s now been a pall over this vaccine,” Dr. William Schaffner, an epidemiologist and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, told CNBC in a phone interview.
“I think if the vaccine is cleared — not guilty — there will have to be a substantial public relations effort made in Europe and around the world in order to restore confidence in this vaccine,” he said.
No red flags in U.S.
While the AstraZeneca vaccine hasn’t been authorized for use in the U.S. just yet, White House Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers Wednesday that there will likely be enough safety and efficacy data to grant the vaccine authorization in April.
When asked whether AstraZeneca’s suspension in European countries could stoke fear among Americans taking other vaccines, Fauci reiterated that the shots undergo rigorous clinical trials and are reviewed by an independent safety monitoring board before they’re widely distributed.
“The entire process is both transparent and independent, and we explain that to people and take the time to address their hesitancy without being confrontative,” Fauci told lawmakers during a hearing by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
This isn’t the first time Fauci has stressed the safety of the current vaccines amid AstraZeneca’s suspension. The infectious diseases expert told MSNBC in an interview Tuesday that scientists in the U.S. continue to carefully evaluate the vaccines as they are deployed for any adverse reactions among recipients.
For instance, medical experts were concerned about reports of severe allergic reactions — or anaphylaxis — occurring among people who were vaccinated with Pfizer’s and Moderna’s jabs. However, those cases appear to be rare, he said, even as the nation has distributed at least one shot to 73 million adult Americans — more than 28% of the population.
“Thus far, and you have to keep following these things very carefully, there are no safety signals that turn out to be red flags,” Fauci said regarding the currently deployed vaccines in the U.S.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told Reuters in an interview published Monday that he has been “pretty reassured” by statements from European regulators that the problems could be occurring by chance.
“I was a bit surprised that so many countries decided to put pause on the administration of the vaccine, especially at a time where the disease itself is so incredibly threatening in most of those countries,” Collins later told CNN on Wednesday, adding that he doesn’t have access to the “primary data that might have caused them to be alarmed.”

Duke University, already operating under lockdown to combat a rise in coronavirus infections, on Tuesday reported 231 cases from last week, almost as many as the school had the entire fall semester.
"This was the highest number of positive cases reported in a single week," the school said in a statement. "The individuals who tested positive have been placed in isolation, while those identified as potential contacts have been placed in precautionary quarantine."
The school issued a "stay in place" order Saturday, requiring students living in Duke-provided housing to remain in their residence hall room or apartment at all times except for essential activities related to food, health or safety. Students living off campus are required to stay there except for a few exceptions.
Rush events by unaffiliated fraternities appear to be the main culprit for the outbreak.
“This (stay-in-place) action is necessary to contain the rapidly escalating number of COVID cases among Duke undergraduates, which is principally driven by students attending recruitment parties for selective living groups,” the university said.

Even though the covid epidemic on U.S. soil is already serious, free Americans still socially gather without any sense of crisis.

The toll of the coronavirus pandemic on physical health and lives worldwide is enormous. But the disease and the lockdown measures have had an impact on mental health too.
Some of the mental health issues that have been reported due to COVID-19 include anxiety, depression, anger, confusion, insomnia, post-traumatic disorders, boredom, loneliness and adjustment problems.
The phases of COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria spanned between early May 2020 and the end of July 2020. Movement was restricted during this period. Gradually, lockdown was eased but a curfew of 8pm to 6am was introduced across major cities in the country to curtail the spread of the virus.
As far as we knew, no previous research had examined the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on mental health among Nigerians during COVID-19 lockdown. So we set out to study the effects of some of these variables on successful coping, stress and self-esteem.
The findings about which categories of people struggled most with their mental health under lockdown could inform interventions to make sure their needs are met.
Demographic variables and aspects of mental health
The socio-demographic variables that we considered in the study were gender, marital status, religion, ethnic group, education attainment and employment status. The facets of mental health we looked at were coping, stress and self-esteem.
We collected information for the study through an online questionnaire across Nigeria. Most of the 353 people, aged 18 to 65, who responded were from the southwestern parts of the country, and they had access to smart phones and social media.
This means the findings may not represent people from lower income groups or other geopolitical areas of the country. Most of our respondents (63%) were men and most were from the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria: Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa.
The questionnaire asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with or were undecided about 12 statements relating to their mental health. These were statements such as "I lose much sleep over worry," "I have been feeling unhappy and depressed" and "I have been losing confidence in myself."
Who adjusted better and in what ways
We found that different categories of people reported psychological impacts during the COVID-19 lockdown. The Yoruba ethnic group, in the southwest region of Nigeria, adjusted better to the situation than other ethnic groups. The Igbo people, in the southeast region, were not that worried when compared to other ethnic groups. But the Yoruba had more positive views of themselves than other ethnic groups did.
The accessibility of quality mental healthcare services differs by region, which is why we regarded ethnicity as relevant in our investigation.
We also analysed educational attainments. We found that individuals who had attained postgraduate education adjusted better and had a more positive view of themselves compared to others. We found that people who had completed secondary school appeared to worry less during this period. Those who were self-employed in Nigeria were able to adjust well, while the unemployed were more worried and had poor views of themselves.
Married people adjusted well; they were less worried and had more positive views of themselves than the unmarried. The married women coped better than married men. The single men adjusted better than single women.
In terms of employment status, salary earners were less worried and had more positive views of themselves than the self-employed or unemployed. Self-employed men adjusted better to the situation than both men and women who earned salaries, as well as unemployed men and women and self-employed women.
Self-employed singles were more anxious than unemployed married and unmarried people, single or married salary earners, and married self-employed individuals.
Looking ahead
Generally, our research findings led to some interesting revelations. We found that men and women suffered mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic—which contradicts findings from studies conducted elsewhere. In line with other studies, individuals' mental health differed based on their marital status, education and employment status.
As Nigeria continues to battle with the challenges of COVID-19, it is worth noting that the categories of individuals who are most susceptible to psychological problems under these circumstances are the unmarried, the unemployed, the less educated and those from the northern parts of the country. These people should receive due attention in intervention programmes.

There are many mental health problems caused by COVID-19. Under the lockdown and restrictions, everyone is more anxious, but in the special situation of the epidemic, I still hope that everyone can adjust their mentality.

ARLINGTON, Va. — CBS travel editor Peter Greenberg says it might be 2023 before we see travel return to its pre-pandemic glory, but there will be an increase in the next few week.
Others -- including travel experts, major airlines and the TSA -- say they don’t think they’ll see pre-pandemic levels of travel this spring. But are excited to here there will be an increase.
"You're going to see a measurable increase in the number of people traveling and the number of destinations they're going to," said Greenberg.
While people have been flocking to Florida recently, Greenberg says west coast destinations like Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado will see the biggest increase in the next three months.
"Open space areas where people are going to feel easier about where they're going to go," said Greenberg.
Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration, agrees. She says the TSA is hiring 6,000 officers nationwide to address the need.
"Here in this area we're looking to hire about 100 officers at Reagan National and Dulles International Airport, and then 50 at BWI," she said.
So how much is travel expected to increase this spring?
From DCA, American Airlines is planning to operate an average of 132 daily departures in April. That’s nearly twice as many as March, but still about half of the daily departures Americans saw in April 2019 before the pandemic.
United is seeing a similar pattern. They say domestic capacity for April 2021 will be 54% compared to April 2019. For international travel, they say capacity for April 2021 will be 42% compared to the same time in 2019. 
But Greenberg says it won't be the big 3 that will reap the most from this spike in travel. Instead, he says Spirit, Allegiant, Frontier, Southwest and Sun Country will be where travelers turn. 
"They're gonna be the ones that open up and flood the zone with lots of new flights, lots of new destinations, and the fares are going to be reasonable," he said.
But even though people are feeling the itch to get away, the CDC is still advising people to avoid both domestic and international travel -- even if you're vaccinated. 
"Every time that there's a surge in travel we have a surge in cases in this country," said CDC director Rochelle Wolensky. "We know that many of our variants have emerged from international places and we know that the travel corridor is a place where people are mixing a lot"
The CDC says they’re hopeful their next set of guidance will have more science around what vaccinated people can do with travel possibly being among them.

Amid COVID health worker shortage, foreign-trained professionals sit on sidelines

As hospitals nationwide struggle with the latest covid-19 surge, it’s not so much beds or ventilators in short supply. It’s the people to care for the sick.
Yet a large, highly skilled workforce of foreign-educated doctors, nurses and other health practitioners is going largely untapped due to licensing and credentialing barriers. According to the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., some 165,000 foreign-trained immigrants in the U.S. hold degrees in health-related fields but are unemployed or underemployed in the midst of the health crisis.
Many of these workers have invaluable experience dealing with infectious disease epidemics such as SARS, Ebola or HIV in other countries yet must sit out the covid pandemic.
The pandemic highlights licensing barriers that predate covid, but many believe it can serve as a wake-up call for state legislatures to address the issue for this crisis and beyond. Already, five states — Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey and New York — have adapted their licensing guidelines to allow foreign-trained health care workers to lend their lifesaving skills amid pandemic-induced staff shortages.
“These really are the cabdrivers, the clerks, the people who walk your dog,” said Jina Krause-Vilmar, CEO of Upwardly Global, a nonprofit that helps immigrant professionals enter the U.S. workforce. “They also happen to be doctors and nurses in their home countries, and they’re just not able to plug and play into the system as it’s set up.”
That’s left doctors such as Sussy Obando, a 29-year-old from Colombia, jumping through hoops to become physicians in the U.S. In 2013, she graduated after six years of medical school in Colombia, then spent a year treating patients in underserved communities. But when Obando arrived in the U.S., her credentials and experience weren’t enough.
While licensure guidelines vary by state, foreign-trained doctors typically must pass a medical licensing exam costing more than $3,500, and then complete at least a year of on-the-job training, known as a residency, in the U.S. For many, including Obando, that means brushing up on their English and learning the relevant medical terminology. She also needed U.S. clinical experience to qualify for a residency, something U.S.-trained doctors achieve through rotations during medical school.
“If you don’t know anyone in this field, you have to go door to door to find somebody to give you the opportunity to rotate,” Obando said.
She tried emailing Hispanic doctors she found online to ask if she could complete a rotation with one of them. She ended up paying $750 to enter a psychiatry rotation at the University of Texas McGovern Medical School in Houston.
“I tried to go into internal medicine,” Obando said. “But because psychiatry was less expensive, I have to go for that.”
She also worked for almost a year as a volunteer at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, and is now assisting with clinical trials for covid vaccines at the Texas Center for Drug Development. She’s applied for a residency through a national program that matches medical school graduates with residency slots. But it’s difficult for foreign-trained physicians to secure a spot, because many are earmarked for U.S. med school graduates. And many residency programs are open only to recent graduates, not those who finished medical school years ago.
“It’s competitive for people who trained in the United States to get into a residency program. If you’re trained outside the United States, it’s even harder,” said Jacki Esposito, director of U.S. policy and advocacy for World Education Services, a nonprofit that helps immigrants find jobs in the U.S. and Canada.
That’s why states such as Colorado have eased the requirement for a residency during the pandemic. Early on, Colorado officials realized they couldn’t license doctors and other health workers because covid lockdowns had canceled required licensing exams. Under an executive order from Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in April, state officials created a temporary licensing program allowing medical school graduates to begin practicing under supervision for six months, and then extended it through June 2021.
Officials created a similar pathway to temporary licensure for foreign medical school graduates who lacked the minimum year of residency.
Colorado also created temporary licenses for foreign-trained nurses, certified nurse’s aides, physician assistants and many other health professionals. All of those licenses require supervision from a licensed professional and are valid only as long as the governor’s public health emergency declaration remains in effect.
The state relaxed the scope-of-practice rules for those health workers, too, allowing them to perform any task their supervisors assign to them.
“So if you’re an occupational therapist, you can give vaccinations as long as they are delegating to you and they’re confident you have the skill and knowledge,” said Karen McGovern, deputy director of legal affairs for the professions and occupations division at the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies. “You can exceed your statutory skill and practice to what needs to be done during the pandemic.”
Through mid-December, the state had received 36 applications from foreign-trained doctors seeking temporary licenses, although only one applicant met all the criteria. New Jersey, on the other hand, received more than 1,100 applications for temporary medical licenses last year. (Michigan also issued an executive order allowing temporary licenses, but it was later rescinded.)
Many of the medical professionals stuck on the sidelines have unique skills and experience that would be invaluable during the pandemic. Victor Ladele, 44, finished medical school in Nigeria and treated patients during a drought in Niger in 2005, in the midst of the Darfur genocide in Sudan in 2007 and after a civil war in Liberia in 2010. His family moved to the U.S. a few years later, but Ladele was recruited to help with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. What he thought would be a three-month stay turned into a two-year mission.
Now back in Edmond, Oklahoma, working with a U.N. program that helps new business ventures get off the ground, Ladele has found that the challenges of the covid pandemic parallel many of his past experiences. He saw how a program for Ebola contact tracing told people with a cough or fever to call a hotline, which would direct them to a care center. But as soon as the initiative went live, rumors began to spread on social media that European doctors at the care centers were harvesting organs. It took months of outreach to tribal and religious leaders to instill confidence in the system.
He’s seen similar misinformation spread about covid and masks.
“If, in Oklahoma, the public health officials had done outreach to all the pastors in the churches and gained their support for masking, would there be more people using masks?” Ladele said.
Ideally, he said, he would like to spend about half his time seeing patients, but the licensing process remains a challenge.
“It’s not unsurmountable,” he said. But “when I think of all the hurdles to credentialing here, I’m not really sure it’s worth the effort.”
Upwardly Global helps health professionals navigate that unfamiliar application and credentialing system. Many foreign-trained health workers have never had to write résumés or interview for jobs.
While the pandemic has temporarily eased entry in five states, Krause-Vilmar and others believe it could be a model to address workforce shortages in underserved areas across the country. As of September, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration had designated more than 7,300 health care shortage areas, requiring an additional 15,000 health care practitioners.
“We’ve had a crisis in access to health care, especially in rural areas, in this country for a long time,” she said. “How do we start imagining what that would look like in terms of more permanent licenses for these folks who are helping us recover and rebuild?”

On Tuesday, Nigeria received 3.92 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. It is the first shipment for the over 16 million doses allocated to the country through the COVAX Facility, aimed at vaccinating 20% of the population.
Nigeria is expected to receive an additional 42 million doses of approved vaccines through the African Union’s African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, but details on the timeline of shipments are not yet clear.
According to government officials, the received doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are undergoing final assessment by Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control. While awaiting the conclusion of the review, health workers across the country will receive training on the vaccination exercise.
The first doses will be administered at a treatment center of National Hospital Abuja on Friday, and the nationwide vaccine rollout is set to commence March 12.
In a press statement, Thabani Maphosa, managing director for country programs at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said, “Nigeria is amongst the first receiving the doses from COVAX, thanks to the excellent level of preparedness put in place by the Government of Nigeria.”
Despite this vote of confidence, public health experts and citizens in the country are worried that sparing, conflicting, and sometimes confusing information on the vaccine deployment will hinder the process.
According to Tolu Ogunlesi, special assistant to the Nigerian president on digital and new media, Nigeria’s vaccine doses will be rolled out in four phases. The first recipients will be front-line health workers and strategic leadership, followed by individuals ages 50 years and above. The third phase will cover individuals ages 18 to 49 with relevant medical conditions, while the last group will be the remaining eligible population, which is made up of individuals ages 18 to 49 without relevant medical conditions.
While the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has been in charge of Nigeria’s coronavirus response in the areas of testing, communication, and surveillance, the task of coordinating vaccination rests squarely on the National Primary Health Care Development Agency.
Following the announcement late Sunday evening that the COVID-19 vaccine would arrive Tuesday, NPHCDA on Monday shared a link to a website where citizens are expected to book their vaccination appointments.
Despite the outlined phases, Devex found that there are no restrictions around the vaccination dates available to different population groups or around who is able to register. The registration process also does not provide any means for the government to verify those claiming to be front-line workers.
Samuel Eleko, a 46-year-old university lecturer who has used the platform, described the open registration process as potentially disenfranchising those who should be prioritized and ensuring the phased approach fails. He noted that young people are more likely to register online than older adults, who have been identified as a priority population.
“By registering online, you [the Nigerian government] will distribute the few [vaccines] you get to the less vulnerable group, and the problem will just begin from there. When other countries would say bye to COVID, Nigeria will be looking for help,” Eleko said.
In addition, a week before the vaccination exercise’s expected initiation, officials at some centers listed on the website said they were not aware of their locations serving that purpose.
Monatan Primary Health Center in Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria, is included among the vaccination sites on the government’s website. But when Devex visited the center late Monday, officials on duty said they were not aware of any COVID-19 vaccination plans at the location.

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich blasted Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday for rescinding Texas' mask mandate and rolling back other Covid-19 restrictions, calling the decision "mystifying," "ridiculous" and "ignorant."
Speaking to reporters before San Antonio's 119-92 victory over the New York Knicks, Popovich said that the coronavirus pandemic is still raging and that Abbott's actions defy science.
"I'm worried about the people in our state," said Popovich, who has led the Spurs to five NBA championships. "That's a pretty mystifying decision considering the situation that we're all in."
Popovich, an Air Force Academy graduate and former intelligence officer, has the third most regular-season coaching victories in pro basketball history. He's also been one of the most outspoken figures in American sports on issues of racial justice and gender equality.
The Spurs coach said he's particularly concerned for business owners who want to keep customers and workers safe but will have no authority to tell patrons to wear masks.
"They're trying to do a good job of keeping everybody safe. Of course they want to open up. But getting rid of masks just seems ignorant to me," said Popovich, who will serve as Team USA's head basketball coach at the upcoming Olympics. "People that didn't want to wear masks in the first place, how do the businesses get them to wear masks? Well, now they don't have to. So now there will be more infections, one would think."
Abbott said Tuesday that his new executive order would rescind most of his previous Covid-19 executive orders and that all businesses would be allowed to open "100 percent" effective March 10.
A representative for Abbott could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
While rates of infections are generally coming down across the U.S., thousands of people are still dying. As of Wednesday afternoon, nearly 14,000 people had died from Covid-19 over the previous seven days, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Texas still has one of the country's highest rates of infection, as more than 12.3 percent of coronavirus tests in the state came back positive over the last seven days, according to Johns Hopkins University data reported Wednesday. Public health officials have said local governments should use a 5 percent positivity rate as a benchmark to safely reopen.
"But when all of a sudden we act like it's over with, when all the science tells us the opposite, it's basically you're saying: 'You get inflected, you die, it's the way it goes. We got to open up,'" Popovich said. "That's not the way to do it. This is really ridiculous."
Popovich said he fears that getting rid of mask mandates could lead to a surge in cases similar to the deadly fall and winter spike, which was linked to holiday travel and lax adherence to safeguards.
"It's like we have to have instant gratification," Popovich said. "We already went through this once, and now we're going to do it again."
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Monday strongly cautioned against Abbott's rollbacks.
"Please hear me clearly," Walensky said. "At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained."
President Joe Biden echoed the concerns Tuesday, even as he announced that the U.S. will have enough Covid-19 vaccine doses for every adult by the end of May.
It’s not the time to lift the Covid-19 restrictions.Please keep washing your hands, stay socially distanced, wear masks.

The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Mr Olamilekan Adegbite, made the disclosure at a forum of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
He said that the lifeline, to serve as a palliative for the sector, would be expended on setting up six mineral clusters in the country’s six geo-political zones.
"During the lockdown, I was invited by the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to come up with things to be done during post-COVID-19 to help stimulate the mining sector.
"Six billion naira was given to our sector as palliative. We came up with setting up of mineral clusters in the six geo-political zones. We have six regions in Nigeria and we are doing six projects."
Adegbite said that the ministry came up with the building of a Gold Souk in Kano in Northwest Nigeria, to boost gold trade and processing in the state.
"We use to have goldsmiths in Nigeria but the profession is fading out. We want to bring it back. People now take our gold to Dubai, to add value.
"If you take a quantum of raw gold worth N10,000 to Dubai, they will refine it without adding anything and create earrings, bangles and other jewelries and sell them 10 times the value they bought it.
"Why can't we make the value locally that is what we are doing now. The concept in Kano is to revive and retain the value of our gold and create employment."
He said that Bauchi State was selected in the Northeast for its abundant kaolin, noting that the mineral was being imported by pharmaceutical and paint companies in Nigeria.
"The mineral is used for the production of mixed kaolin and other drugs. Bauchi State has a lot of kaolin and we are planning to develop them."
Adegbite said that Kogi was selected in the North Central as the state was also blessed with gold, adding that the ministry would build a smelting plant in the state to aggregate the gold.
He said further that Ibadan in Oyo State was selected in the Southwest for its abundant gemstone market.
"The gemstone market in Ibadan is informal and the government is not getting anything out of the mineral. Therefore, the government is now going to formalise it.
"It is an international market. People come from outside the country but we are being cheated; we are going to regulate the market.
"We are also going to train people on gemstones cutting and polishing to add value to the mineral."
Adegbite said that Ebonyi in the Southeast was also selected, due to its large quantum of lead mineral, adding that a smelting plant would be built in the state to boost the activities of artisanal miners in the zone.
The minister said that Calabar was similarly, chosen in South South for its abundant Barite mineral.
It will be recalled that the Cross River government had approved five hectares of land for the mines and steel development ministry for the cluster project.

The Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) has announced plans in collaboration with stakeholders to launch Nigeria’s first Medical Special Economic Zone (MSEZ).
This was disclosed by NEPZA boss, Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, in a meeting with the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) on Wednesday in Abuja.
The NEPZA Chief revealed that the  Lekki Free Trade Zone in Lagos State was set up to the location of an equipped and functional Medical Special Economic Zone (MSEZ) in Nigeria, citing that when fully launched it would provide world-class healthcare services and reduce medical tourism for Nigerians.He added that the effect of the pandemic on Nigeria’s healthcare sector was a catalyst to the Medical Special Economic Zone (MSEZ), as the FG had to reevaluate how to build more capacity in Healthcare.
“The MSEZ aims to reduce medical tourism from Nigeria, revitalise the health systems, create jobs and conserve foreign exchange.
“If approved, the project will be executed in partnership with the Lagos State Government (LASG) and the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH).
“Discussions are already underway with high-level stakeholders and potential investors on the implementation arrangements for the zone which has been met with huge positive response,’’ Adesugba said.
Nairametrics reported on November 2020 that NEPZA was thoughtfully considering setting up 15 Medical Free zones in at least 15 states of the federation which would save Nigeria about $1billion in annual medical tourism, not minding the torrential pressures from the State governments lobbying to skew the location of the novel Medical Free Zones to their own states.
“The push by these State governments shows acceptability of the project premised upon its viability. NEPZA is, therefore, considering if the project can be located in more than one state,” the NEPZA boss said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the limitations and in some cases, inadequacies of healthcare systems, globally – with some regions and countries faring worse than others. It has also revealed how crucial certain professions and services are to our societies. That list includes pharmacies.
In many countries, pharmacists – the third-largest and most accessible healthcare professionals in the world – are often the first point of contact with the healthcare system.
In Nigeria, for example, the healthcare system is split into the private and public sector. The private sector makes up 38% of the healthcare facilities in the nation, while the public sector, fully controlled by the government, is divided into primary, secondary and tertiary systems. Primary healthcare, mainly located in rural areas, only offers essential healthcare services such as maternal and child healthcare. However, secondary and tertiary, which are mostly in urban areas, often cater to specialised healthcare needs such as mental healthcare, cardiac surgery, cancer management, etc.
Due to the fragmented nature of healthcare service, most Nigerians pay for healthcare services directly out-of-pocket (these payments account for about 75% of total health expenditure in Nigeria). To most Nigerians, quick access and immediacy are important considerations and pharmacies often meet those needs – even as they deal with a low pharmacist to population ratio.
While the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends one pharmacist to 2000 people in a population, the reality in Nigeria and indeed, most of sub-Saharan Africa is different.
“In Nigeria, as professionals, we are faced with about 50,000 people to one pharmacist,” says Sam Ohuabunwa, President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN).
Although it is common to think that only pharmacies are charged with preparing, dispensing and selling medications, in reality, those roles also apply to Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors (PPMVs). Known as ‘chemists’ in Nigeria, these vendors have no formal training in pharmacy but sell pharmaceutical products for profit. In some cases, these chemists are the only access community members have to healthcare.
In reality, pharmacies play much bigger roles. While they dispense and sell medicine, they also educate patients, provide consultation services, help with immunization programmes, blood and sugar monitoring, diet modification, weight management and stress management. A 2012 study also established that pharmacies in Nigeria contribute to the maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) system. Over 15% of community pharmacies see between 5 and 10 pregnant women and 10–20 children per day. A 2016 study also revealed that community pharmacies are important to Nigeria’s immunization programmes.
The multi-faceted role that pharmacies serve in various communities is critical. Emmanuel Edekere, a 64-year-old father of seven living in Uyo, a city in the South-south region of Nigeria, gets his blood pressure checked at the licensed pharmacy nearby. “I can have one of my children do it for me, but the people at the pharmacy went to school for this and I also want proper information I can trust”.
Fighting the Pandemic
Globally, pharmacies have been essential to efforts against the COVID-19 pandemic. They have helped with drug review and therapy, patient counselling, patient screening, PPE preservation, patient rounds, mitigating drug shortages, research and data analysis.
In Nigeria, pharmacists swung into action when the first COVID-19 case in the country was confirmed on February 27, 2020. The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) has lobbied the federal government to provide grants for the local production of medicines. ACPN, the Association of Community Pharmacists in Nigeria ran a nationwide awareness campaign on drug misuse during the azithromycin hydroxychloroquine controversy.
Additionally, the Association of Industrial Pharmacists of Nigeria (NAIP) mitigates shortages of COVID-19 and essential medicines while the Association of Hospital and Administrative Pharmacists of Nigeria (AHAPN), part of the front line team in COVID-19 isolation and treatment centres, are involved in medication review, dispensing and monitoring. Nigerian pharmacists also play an important role in producing hand sanitisers and disinfectants, both necessary resources in the fight against COVID-19.
Pharmacists have also had to act as fact-checkers, dispelling rumours and misinformation that range from the mundane to the deadly. “I can’t count how many times I tell people that drinking alcohol won’t ‘wash down the virus’ from your throat, or that the pandemic is not a hoax,” says Adekunle, who runs a pharmacy in Lagos.
Nasiru who owns two pharmacies in Niger state and Abuja notes an increase in his responsibilities. “Each day, my staff and I have to persuade more and more people to listen to us, ignore rumours and stay safe. It can be hard but you are literally saving lives, so we buckle up”.
Pharmacies have also helped patients and the public deal with the mental strain from the COVID-19 pandemic; often providing counselling and support services. “We are in extremely trying times for both our physical and mental wellbeing. A key part of what it means to be human today is to have to grapple with so many mental strains. The conversation around guarding our mental space has been ongoing even before this pandemic, while we are in it and it will continue when we overcome it,” says Joke Bakare, MD, MedPlus.
As a result of their added responsibilities, pharmacists themselves have not been spared from the disease and its impact. In June 2020, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) and Association of Hospital and Administrative Pharmacists of Nigeria revealed that six of their 359 frontline workers had tested positive for COVID-19. In July 2020, 17 additional pharmacists were reported to have tested positive.
“Aside from the 359 hospital pharmacists directly involved in attending to COVID-19 patients in hospitals and isolation centres, there are other thousands of community pharmacists out there that are daily exposed to preclinical or asymptomatic patients who see pharmacies as their first port of call,” says Ohuabunwa, PSN President.
Elijah Mohammed, Registrar of the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN), the government body which regulates the practice of pharmacy in the country, has also urged pharmacists to maintain a high level of personal protection even as they meet the needs of others: “The structure and nature of your work continue to make you vulnerable, you must therefore ensure you prioritise your personal and personnel protection”.
Navigating the Future
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, pharmacies have adapted their mode of operations. Face-to-face counselling has given way to window-dispensing/counselling in community and hospital pharmacies
“Players in the profession and the pharmaceutical industry need to think bigger; they must dream dreams and build real pharmaceutical entities that will meet the expectations of the nation,” says Osagie Ehanire, Nigeria’s Minister for Health who believes that the industry’s entrepreneurs need to pool their resources to compete properly.
Bryan Mezue, Co-founder and CEO of Lifestores Healthcare – which is focused on primary healthcare delivery – agrees: “Our thesis is that the massive opportunity for transformation in healthcare delivery in Nigeria is finding a way to support pharmacies to professionalize the whole industry,” he says.
In February 2020, Lifestores raised a $1 Million seed round and in November 2020, unveiled its online B2B pharmaceutical marketplace, OGApharmacy in a pre-launch. “We see community pharmacies as the first port of call for primary healthcare, and work hand-in-hand with pharmacists to deliver health programs that serve all Nigerians,” says Mezue.
That commitment to communities and the future is also echoed by Chidi Okoro, Chief Transformation Officer, HealthPlus, West Africa’s largest retail pharmacy chain: “Digital transformation remains at the forefront of our thoughts. The industry is headed towards a point where healthcare services are not location-locked. Ultimately, we believe that quality and affordable healthcare is a fundamental right of citizens and a critical part of any human capital development process”.
Okoro is correct. Nigerian pharmacies are embracing technology to aid their service delivery and reach more people while organisations like The Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria (ACPN) has urged its members to use digital technology to improve patient care and make healthcare services more accessible.
As the Nigerian healthcare sector evolves, pharmacies will continue to serve critical roles in the nation – making the most of available resources to provide quality healthcare service to Nigerians.

President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response team is holding a news briefing Monday on the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 500,000 Americans, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden will order all flags on federal property be lowered to half-staff for the next five days to mark the grim milestone of 500,000 American deaths due to Covid-19.
Separately, White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci is encouraging Americans to steel themselves against a sense of Covid-19 complacency even as coronavirus infections plummet and some scientists predict that herd immunity is just around the corner.

Pfizer-BioNTech said Thursday that it is beginning clinical trials of its Covid-19 vaccine in pregnant women, the first such trials to include expectant mothers in the U.S.
The drugmaker aims to enroll about 4,000 pregnant women in the trials, which will include participants in the U.S. as well as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mozambique, South Africa, Spain and the U.K. Women over 18 and who are 24 to 34 weeks into their pregnancy will be eligible.
The first doses will be administered in the U.S., Pfizer said.
Dr. Brenna Hughes, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Duke Health in Durham, North Carolina, said she "absolutely applauds" Pfizer's study of its vaccine in pregnant women.
"Any data to help reassure pregnant patients that the vaccine is safe for them is desperately needed," Hughes, a member of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said.
"We are proud to start this study in pregnant women and continue to gather the evidence on safety and efficacy to potentially support the use of the vaccine by important subpopulations," Dr. William Gruber, senior vice president of Vaccine Clinical Research at Pfizer, said in a statement.
Some of the women will get the real shots, while others get a placebo. They won't know which kind they received until after giving birth. At that point, women who got the placebo will be offered the vaccine.
Researchers will monitor for any negative side effects in women, including miscarriage. There are some preliminary data on safety during pregnancy, because some women in earlier studies of the Covid-19 vaccine became pregnant while they participated in clinical trials.
"From everything that we're seeing so far from pregnant women who've had the vaccine, there are no red flags," Stacey Stewart, president of the March of Dimes, said.

The pregnant women who participated in the clinical trials of the Covid-19 vaccine are really admirable. After all, the impact of the vaccine on pregnant women is unknown. This is good news for us ordinary people.

The percentage of adults who say they're willing to get the Covid-19 vaccine increased from September to December, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published Tuesday.
However, the report found that a significant percentage of Americans still remain hesitant about the vaccine: Only about half of adults under age 65 said they were "absolutely certain" or "very likely" to get the Covid-19 vaccination.
The CDC report is based on surveys taken in September and December.
In December, 49 percent of adults surveyed said they were going to get the Covid-19 vaccine, up from 39 percent in September. The largest increases were seen in adults 65 and older (66 percent said they intended to get the vaccine, up from 49 percent); essential workers (46 percent, up from 37 percent); and adults under 65 with underlying health conditions (42 percent, up from 37 percent).
What's more, the percentage of Americans who said they did not intend to get the vaccine declined, from 38 percent in September to 32 percent in December.
Younger adults, women and Black Americans were among the groups most likely to say they didn't intend to get a Covid-19 vaccination. Adults living in nonmetropolitan areas, and adults with lower education levels, lower income and without health insurance were also most likely to report they didn't plan to be vaccinated.
Among adults who said in December that they didn't plan to get vaccinated, the most common concerns were side effects (30 percent); lack of trust in the government (12 percent); and concern the vaccines were developed too quickly (10 percent).
Concerns about safety increased in December, compared with September, while concerns that the vaccines were developed too quickly decreased.
Fifteen percent of adults not intending to get the vaccine said that they were planning on waiting to see if it is safe, and would consider getting it later.
The report highlights the need to promote vaccine confidence across all populations in the U.S., including by tailoring messages to address specific concerns among individuals, the authors wrote.
"Ensuring high and equitable vaccination coverage among all populations, including by addressing reasons for not intending to receive vaccination, is critical to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and bring an end to the pandemic," they wrote.
The doubts about vaccine safety have been around for a long time, but as far as the current situation in the United States is concerned, I personally think that this is not a doubt but a panic, and people have lost their normal ability to judge. Is this considered one of the achievements of former President Trump? A divided president has created a divided America, and a president who despises science has created a group of ignorant Americans.

WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation's leading public health advisers, said Sunday that the U.S. should still proceed with its plan to give people both doses of the currently available Covid-19 vaccines, even as some top health care officials have suggested that the priority should be giving first doses to as many people as possible.
There’s disagreement among some experts about how to proceed amid supply shortages and new variants that could become more resistant to current vaccines or an increase in infections. Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who advised the President Joe Biden's transition team on the pandemic, said on last week’s “Meet the Press” that he believed prioritizing more first doses would set the country on a better path forward ahead of a possible new surge he compared to a “hurricane.”
But Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told "Meet the Press" Sunday he doesn’t believe the science is clear yet on the issue, and that studying whether that path forward could be better would take too much time.
“What we have right now, and what we must go with, is the scientific data that we’ve accumulated. And it’s really solid,” Fauci said.
“You can do both, you can get as many people in their first dose at the same time as adhering, within reason, to the timetable of the second dose. It would be great to have the study, but I don’t think we could do it in time.”
There’s been a decline in daily coronavirus cases and new deaths, according to an NBC News analysis, in recent days, after a post-holiday peak. It’s been almost three weeks since the daily new caseload hit 200,000. But while new daily deaths have decreased on the whole, that decline has been slower than the decline in cases.
America’s vaccination rate has been steadily increasing since vaccines were first approved in December. While the pace is picking up, vaccine distribution and administration has suffered from its share of setbacks, and Fauci admitted there’s still far more demand than supply.
Fauci said that he expects the pace of vaccinations to continue to rise thanks to an increase in the supply for the vaccines currently available, as well as new vaccines like one from Johnson & Johnson, which is petitioning the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization.
“If you look at the escalation of the availability of doses purely on the ability and capability of manufacturing that, it’s going to escalate and will continue to escalate as we go from February to March to April and beyond. Even though there’s a clear, clear discrepancy between the demand and supply, that will get better,” he said.
While Fauci said some steps could have been taken earlier to lessen the issues, he admitted it was “a bit inevitable” either way.
“With all due respect and fairness, it’s a bit inevitable. We certainly, I guess, could have contracted a bit more aggressively with the companies to get more doses, but right now, this is what we have. These are the contractual arrangements, they're coming off the line as quickly as we can,” he said.
“Things will continue to get better.”

Kaitlyn Romoser first caught Covid-19 in March, likely on a trip to Denmark and Sweden, just as the scope of the pandemic was becoming clear. Romoser, who is 23 and a laboratory researcher in College Station, Texas, tested positive and had a few days of mild, coldlike symptoms.
In the weeks that followed, she bounced back to what felt like a full recovery. She even got another test, which was negative, in order to join a study as one of the earliest donors of convalescent blood plasma in a bid to help others.
Six months later, in September, Romoser got sick again, after a trip to Florida with her dad. This second bout was much worse. She lost her sense of taste and smell and suffered lingering headaches and fatigue. She tested positive for Covid-19 once more — along with her cat.
Romoser believes it was a clear case of reinfection, rather than some mysterious reemergence of the original infection gone dormant. Because the coronavirus, like other viruses, regularly mutates as it multiplies and spreads through a community, a new infection would bear a different genetic fingerprint. But because neither lab had saved her testing samples for genetic sequencing, there was no way to confirm her suspicion.
“It would be nice to have proof,” said Romoser. “I’ve literally been straight up called a liar, because people don’t want to believe that it’s possible to be reinfected. Why would I lie about being sick?”
As millions of Americans struggle to recover from Covid-19 and millions more scramble for the protection offered by vaccines, U.S. health officials may be overlooking an unsettling subgroup of survivors: those who get infected more than once. Identifying how common reinfection is among people who contracted Covid-19 — as well as how quickly they become vulnerable and why — carries important implications for our understanding of immunity and the nation’s efforts to devise an effective vaccination program.
Scientists have confirmed that reinfections after initial illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus are possible, but so far have characterized them as rare. Fewer than 50 cases have been substantiated worldwide, according to a global reinfection tracker. Just five have been substantiated in the U.S., including two detected in California in late January.
That sounds like a rather insignificant number. But scientists’ understanding of reinfection has been constrained by the limited number of U.S. labs that retain Covid-19 testing samples or perform genetic sequencing. A KHN review of surveillance efforts finds that many U.S. states aren’t rigorously tracking or investigating suspected cases of reinfection.
KHN sent queries about reinfection surveillance to all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Of 24 responses, fewer than half provided details about suspected or confirmed reinfection cases. Where officials said they’re actively monitoring for reinfection, they have found far more potential cases than previously anticipated.
In Washington state, for instance, health officials are investigating nearly 700 cases that meet the criteria for possible reinfection, with three dozen awaiting genetic sequencing and just one case confirmed.
In Colorado, officials estimate that possible reinfections make up just 0.1 percent of positive coronavirus cases. But with more than 396,000 cases reported, that means nearly 400 people may have been infected more than once.
In Minnesota, officials have investigated more than 150 cases of suspected reinfection, but they lack the genetic material to confirm a diagnosis, a spokesperson said.
In Nevada, where the first U.S. case of Covid-19 reinfection was identified last summer, Mark Pandori, director of the state public health lab, said there’s no doubt cases are going undetected.
“I predict that we are missing cases of reinfection,” he said. “They are very difficult to ascertain, so you need specialized teams to do that work, or a core lab.”
Such cases are different from instances of so-called long-haul Covid-19, in which the original infection triggers debilitating symptoms that linger for months and viral particles can continue to be detected. Reinfection occurs when a person is infected with Covid-19, clears that strain and is infected again with a different strain, raising concerns about sustained immunity from the disease. Such reinfections occur regularly with four other coronaviruses that circulate among humans, causing common colds.

As Covid-19 spread across the country and local governments instituted restrictions and closures to keep infections from rising, fitness studios and gyms were often the first and hardest hit. Now, almost a year since Congress passed its first coronavirus relief package to help struggling Americans get back on their feet, one sector feels largely abandoned.
“Gyms are the forgotten pieces. We talk about payroll protection programs and restaurants and everyone kind of understands that because everyone goes to restaurants and bars,” Dale King, owner of a CrossFit gym in Portsmouth, Ohio, told NBC News in a phone interview.
Nearly half of all fitness studios around the country are expected to close their doors permanently if they don’t receive the needed relief. In a last ditch effort, thousands of small gym owners are asking Congress for billions in funding so they can make payroll, pay rent, and implement changes to comply with Covid-related restrictions.
“I really kind of hate to ask for federal funding. But at this point, I'm looking at it more as an investment in our healthcare system in general,” said King, an Army veteran.
“The industry hasn't had as much muscle behind it as restaurants or theaters, but we have been trying to figure out how to get there, how to have a seat at the table in these conversations,” said Debra Strougo, the founder of Row House, a chain of rowing machine gyms.
PLEADING WITH CONGRESS
The Health and Fitness Recovery Act, which is expected to be re-introduced in the House in the next few weeks, would establish a $30 billion fund to “provide structured relief to health and fitness service establishments.”
“We need help, and we need Congress to stand up for these businesses, not just restaurants and bars and nightclubs and entertainment — but gyms have been severely impacted,” said Douglas in a phone interview.
“We are not quite sure how to get to the other side of this — especially in the areas where studios are still closed,” said Strougo.
Strougo and other business owners are scheduled to meet with lawmakers next week. They see this time as a critical window for members of Congress to hear their concerns as lawmakers hammer out the details of the next relief package.
DEPRESSION RUNNING RAMPANT
Depression, drug overdose, ailing mental health and weight gain are the side effects of an industry struggling to survive.
Personally impacted by the wide-ranging benefits of exercise on mental health, Dixon Douglas first opened CycleBar in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after he was diagnosed with depression in 2015.
“People go to gyms so that they can de-stress, Covid-19 has caused so much stress in everyday lives that when you are shutting down someone's relief, it is like taking away their medicine,” he said.
This news is worth looking at those friends who ignore the dangers of COVID-19. If COVID-19 is allowed to spread, everyone will get into trouble and some unhappy people will die. The failed anti epidemic policy of the United States has caused serious damage to its national strength.

They were the original Code Talkers, Native American soldiers sent to fight in France a century ago who relayed orders from the trenches in Cherokee to confuse the enemy and help the Allies secure victory during World War I.
Then, the Germans were the foe. Now, it's Covid-19.
While the rollout of coronavirus vaccinations has been chaotic and resisted by some of the public, the Cherokee have quietly mobilized their members to get as many needles into as many arms as soon as possible, starting with some of the most endangered members of the tribe — those who still speak Cherokee.
"We put Cherokee-fluent speakers, most of whom are elders, at the front of the line," Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., leader of the 385,000-strong Cherokee Nation, said on a Zoom call from the reservation in Oklahoma. "The reason is that our language is at risk."
Tribal leaders and activists across the country have harnessed the reverence for Native American culture and tradition to vaccinate a people that has deep-rooted fears and suspicions of the U.S. government and the medical establishment.
"We are more at risk because we've had to deal with 500 years of oppression," said Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Seattle-based Urban Indian Health Institute, who said some of the Native American women who were forcibly sterilized in the 1960s and the 1970s are still alive.
But a survey of 1,435 Native Americans across the country spearheaded by Echo-Hawk in November also revealed that 75 percent would be willing to be vaccinated, not because they suddenly trust Uncle Sam, but because they put the "we" ahead of the "me."
"The primary motivation for participants who indicated willingness to get vaccinated was a strong sense of responsibility to protect the Native community and preserve cultural ways," a summary of the report said. "Despite hesitancy towards the vaccine due to historical and current abuse from healthcare and government institutions, they ultimately felt that the heavy cost of COVID-19 on their community outweighed potential risks from the vaccine."
So Native American leaders are selling their people on vaccinations by emphasizing the good they could do for the tribe, as opposed to the individual, Echo-Hawk said. And it appears to be working.
The Seattle Indian Health Board gets about 7,000 calls a month, Echo-Hawk said. On Monday, it got 4,900 calls from Native Americans seeking vaccine information. "It crashed our system," she said.
The Cherokee nation, as of Wednesday, had been able to vaccinate 12,000 people.
Hoskin said: "When fluent speakers got the vaccine, I think that helped people's anxiety subside. And I think people felt sort of a renewed obligation to try and protect the culture by getting vaccinated."
Not all the Cherokee speakers who got the first shots are over 65, Hoskin said. But the tribe was able to prioritize who was vaccinated first because it answers to the Indian Health Service, a federal agency, rather than the state of Oklahoma, which has put most people under age 65 in Phase 4 of its rollout.
"I like to think a lot of Cherokee leaders feel like this," Hoskin said. "You've got your ancestors at your back."