₦airaland Forum

Effective January 26, all airline passengers to the United States ages two years and older must provide either a negative COVID-19 viral test taken within three calendar days of travel or provide a positive test result and documentation from a licensed health care provider or public health official of having recovered from COVID-19 in the 90 days preceding travel. Passengers must also attest, under penalty of law, to having received a negative qualifying test result or to recovery from COVID-19 and medical clearance to travel.   
Airlines must deny boarding to passengers who do not meet these requirements.
If you are planning to return to the U.S., you should contact your airline for specific information about testing requirements for travelers. Because airlines may adopt and modify their own specific policies to implement CDC’s new rule, you should contact the carrier for your U.S.-bound flight and not rely on information from other carriers or information or experience from previous trips.
For the latest updates and for information on where to get COVID tested in Laos, please also read the U.S. Embassy in Laos’ COVID-19 information page.

The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) Cross River State Branch has blamed the increase in the number of COVID-19 infections in Nigeria on inadequate Isolation/treatment centers across the country.
The Chairman of Nigeria Medical Association, Cross River State Branch, Dr Innocent Abang, disclosed this while speaking to DAILY POST via telephone on Saturday.
Abang, who regretted the increase of the second wave of the pandemic, insisted that inadequate isolation/treatment centers exposed many people who wouldn’t be prone to the pandemic to be easily infected.
“Concerning, the isolation centres; there is a lot left undone as many states don’t have adequate isolation centres to meet the number of patients presenting in the centres,” Abang said.
“Another very important aspect of COVID-19, which is being ignored is the Holding Bay, where patients who are suspected cases of COVID-19 are kept until their results are out.
“This is important because to reduce disease transmission, the Holding Bay must be in place to keep suspected cases from the general population or other patients in the hospital.”
Abang also said that a study conducted by some persons in the Western part of Nigeria revealed that most Nigerians are not interested in participating in COVID-19 clinical trials.
“This is due largely to ignorance of most Nigerians about the disease and its severity/ Many Nigerians are still skeptical about the reality of the disease.
“Religious beliefs, Cultural influences and ignorance, contributes to the unwillingness of most Nigerians to accept the existence of COVID-19, let alone accepting a vaccine which is believed to affect their DNA or is used to regulate their lives.
“In addition, the government of Nigeria is not ready for an adequate vaccination for her citizens because they are aiming at vaccinating just 40% of the population.
“The first group to be vaccinated is expected to be the health workers and first responders, those aged 50 years and above and those with co-morbidities.
“This will leave a large group unvaccinated if Nigerians showed interest at all for the vaccination” he stated.
Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 infections in Nigeria as of today is 107,345, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) confirmed.

Think about it and know that the hospital must be in a state of collapse. Many people would rather treat themselves at home than go to the hospital. Everyone should stay at home and keep a certain social distance.

The FG has stated that the recent surge in COVID-19 cases has forced hospitals across the country to run out of facilities.
The Federal Government has alerted Nigerians that hospitals across the country are running out of facilities to handle more serious cases of coronavirus infections as the virus is spreading fast with mild symptoms in some victims and severe illnesses and death in others.
This disclosure was made by the Director-General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, at the joint national briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on Covid-19, on Monday, January 11, 2021.
He said that the country has recorded a spike in the number of new Covid-19 cases and no state has been spared of the coronavirus disease.
What the NCDC Director-General is saying
Ihekweazu in his statement said,
“Our data suggest that we were right in saying that there is COVID circulating in every state of Nigeria and we all have to continue the hard work we have been doing. We are reaching a critical level where our hospital capacity will no longer be able to cope with more serious Covid-19 cases. Health workers will be forced to make tough decisions.
“We need to protect our more vulnerable citizens, while we all have to take responsibility because this has gone beyond the NCDC, PTF or government, as all hands must be on deck.
“By organising large gatherings indoors, you are not only putting yourself and guests at risk but also the staff who have limited choice but to serve. By going to clubs, you are putting your parents at risk.”
The NCDC boss also said that many victims have continued to experience fatigue and other symptoms even after recovery.
What you should know
With the current outbreak of a second wave of the coronavirus disease, Nigeria has reported over 100,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases with over 1,300 casualties across the country. This has led to renewed strict enforcement of health measures and Covid-19 protocols by authorities in the country.
The government is even reported to be considering imposing another lockdown as part of the measure to curtail the spread of the virus especially with the new strain of the disease which is reported to spread faster.

President-elect Joe Biden is planning to take a dramatic step aimed at increasing the amount of vaccine available to states.
His transition team says he'll change a Trump administration policy that kept millions of doses in reserve, only to be shipped when it was time to administer people's second doses.
Instead, the Biden administration plans to send most of the currently reserved doses out right away, allowing more people to get first doses. For people who've gotten initial shots, the Biden team is making a bet that new doses could be manufactured in time to keep booster shots on schedule.
The two vaccines that have been authorized so far, made by Pfizer and Moderna, both require two shots several weeks apart. The need for two doses is one reason why the roll-out of the vaccine has gotten off to a sluggish start, and there's been a lot of frustration with the pace of vaccinations.
According to CDC, there have been 22 million doses distributed, but just 6.7 million administered.
"The President-Elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible. He supports releasing available doses immediately, and believes the government should stop holding back vaccine supply so we can get more shots in Americans' arms now," spokesman T.J. Ducklo said in a statement to NPR, noting more details would be available next week.
Some public health experts and scientists have been pushing for this move, arguing that the most important thing is to get as many people at least one shot as soon as possible, without being too concerned about scheduling the booster. They point out that while the vaccines are authorized as a series of two shots, data from clinical trials suggests that one shot is still protective, and many have argued there's a significant benefit to giving more people one shot.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health — who advises both the Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration on the federal COVID-19 response — tells NPR there's no plan to abandon the two-shot regimen.
The Biden team is "not talking about withholding and not giving the second dose," he says. "They are completely committed to giving the second dose on time. They feel that the importance of getting as many people as possible is worth the risk."
The Biden team is hopeful companies will be able to manufacture more doses quickly.
"We have faith that the manufacturers can produce enough vaccines to ensure people can get their second doses in a timely manner, while also getting more people their first dose," Biden's incoming press secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing Friday. "The president-elect has said he will use the Defense Production Act as needed to help produce materials and whatever else is needed to ensure supply."
However, Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine effort launched by the Trump administration, defends its current policy.
"If President-Elect Biden is suggesting that the maximum number of doses should be made available, consistent with ensuring that a second dose of vaccine will be there when the patient shows up, then that is already happening," wrote spokesperson Michael Pratt in a statement to NPR. "Operation Warp Speed monitors manufacturing closely, with the intent to transition from reserving as many second doses as manufacturing further stabilizes with a consistent flow of vaccines."
A key question is whether public health officials across the country would be able to effectively make use of a larger supply of vaccine doses and quickly bring more people in to get vaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy and disorganization have proven to be problems in many places, not just supply of doses.
The head of the Association of Immunization Managers, Claire Hannan, says in her view, "it's probably a good thing to get more doses flowing." The goal, she says, should be to send doses to the field as fast as possible. "Get it, thaw it, give it. [Then] order the second dose. Don't try to store it at CDC, don't try to store it at McKesson."
Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, agrees that this is a good move. He says it's become even more urgent to get as many people vaccinated as fast as possible because of the emergence of new variants of the virus that appear to be more contagious.
"As the virus continues to spread and as we begin to contemplate the possibility of the new variant or other new variants becoming more of a problem in this country it's a race against time and the faster we get more vaccine out the better," Lipsitch says.
There is a concern that if something goes wrong with manufacturing there may not be a steady supply and booster shots will end up getting delayed. This is worrisome because it's not clear how good the protection from one shot will really be or how long it will last.
The danger of a one-shot regimen "is that the vaccines might actually be — long term — less efficacious than they've been shown to be when using the regimen that's authorized for use," explains Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security. "It could be potentially harmful if we decide to deviate from that just because of a short-term supply issue."
Rasmussen and others worry that a weak immune response could actually lead to the virus developing new mutations that are even more dangerous. The Food and Drug Administration issued a statement earlier this week confirming the importance of the booster shots.
But many approve of the Biden policy announced Friday.
"This strategy makes tons of sense," Dr. Robert Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco wrote in an email to NPR. "We know from the data and models that getting more people vaccinated with their first shots quickly will save the most lives."
Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials or ASTHO, calls the Biden move "aggressive and responsive" to calls to speed up vaccination. The big question for state health officials is that they "still don't have a lot of information about what kind of supply chain there's going to be for vaccine in the upcoming months," he explains.
"Our hope is that the Biden team has gotten some of that information and feels that we can make this kind of a change and that there's going to be adequate continued supply of the vaccine," he says. "So that when people do come back for their second doses, there will be a second dose for them to have."
If it turns out there are production issues down the line, the Biden decision could be reversed, suggests Julie Swann, a supply chain expert and professor at North Carolina State University.
"I think it is a good idea to send out as much vaccine as possible — as long as there is an indication that the manufacturers will be able to supply more," she says. "[If] that supply becomes jeopardized, it would absolutely be a reasonable strategy to go back to the strategy of reserving some vaccine for that second dose."
A piece of cake, is it for more people to eat so as to avoid starvation immediately, or to ensure that a few people are full? This is really a problem! The best answer to this problem is to make the cake bigger and more. The question is, what if there are not enough raw materials in a short time?
In my opinion, all this is related to US President Trump, because he told people that there is no need to be nervous, but he told people that as long as they have a vaccine, everything is not a problem. Can such a person be elected president by the people? Perhaps only the United States can have such a miracle.

WASHINGTON – For the past year, federal law enforcement agencies have received tens of thousands of complaints of fraud tied to the coronavirus pandemic. More than 100 cases have been prosecuted, and authorities are expecting this number to rise as states continue to rollout vaccines.
"We've been concerned about fraud schemes regarding the vaccine as soon as the vaccine went from an idea to reality … The one thing that we've learned throughout this pandemic is that when there's money to be made, criminals will figure out how to do it," said FBI Financial Crimes Section Chief Steven Merrill.
Merrill said he can't say how many complaints the FBI has received regarding vaccine-related fraud, or how many have been elevated to criminal investigations. But he said officials have seen instances involving websites advertising fake vaccines.
At least one fraud investigation has been made public in New York.
The state's attorney general's office is investigating whether a healthcare provider in Orange County, New York misrepresented itself to state officials to obtained vaccine doses and distributed them to members of the public who aren't on the state's priority list. Parcare Community Health Network said in a statement that it is cooperating with investigators.
In late December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that healthcare providers who fraudulently obtain vaccines could face up to $1 million in fines and loss of state license. Cuomo also said this week that he plans to propose a bill that would impose criminal penalties to medical providers and other entities who sell or give vaccines to those who aren't yet eligible.
Federal prosecutors in Maryland also recently seized websites claiming to be biotechnology companies that are developing treatments for COVID-19. Authorities said the fake websites used logos of real companies to dupe victims into providing personal information.

Do you think COVID-19 is real? That, nowadays, is the most important question to ask as Nigeria gets deeper into what has been termed the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The individuals’ response to that question ultimately determines their attitude to the dreaded disease and any information about it. Significantly, the response to the questions so conditions what people do about safety protocols such as the use of facemasks, hand washing, hand-sanitizing, and social distancing. Indeed, the answer to that question holds the key to the success we can expect in the fight against the coronavirus.
In my little corner of the earth, I have heard interesting responses. Please listen in: Well, I think COVID-19 is real but the media and government are just exaggerating it. No – there is nothing like that; they are just using it to make money. There is no COVID in Nigeria jare – what people have is malaria or typhoid fever, at worst. I have not seen anyone who has it yet; I will only believe when I see one case. Why is government not showing us those who have died from COVID? That disease is for big people who go abroad. That thing is a scam. What is COVID sef? Abeg!
Such incredulity during a global pandemic is itself incredible. I do not intend to explore the reasons people give for not believing but the fact is that many Nigerians still do not believe there is anything called coronavirus disease, whether the country is experiencing a second, third or fourth wave of it. When you walk the streets of Lagos (or any other Nigerian city), you get a sense of what people think about COVID-19. If you encounter a hundred people, you would be lucky to find 10 with facemasks. Out of those 10, at least five must have converted the mask to a decorative piece of fabric that supports the chin (you may call it chin mask). The more careful Nigerians permit the mask to cover only the mouth. They usually leave the nose open as a way of thumbing their nose at the disease. Thank God if you get two people with both mouth and nose covered.
Well, it gets a little worse. People are mildly stigmatized nowadays for wearing a mask. “Are you still wearing this thing, Dr Allwell?” I was asked when I went to renew my vehicle papers in September. Instantly, several eyes zoomed in on me. It seemed none of them had seen a facemask in a long while.“Coro don go now” was the final but gratuitous counsel I received. My response may bore the reader; so, let us skip it.

When COVID-19 initially blazed through Asia, Europe and then the United States, global public health experts worried that it could be catastrophic for Africa, with its crowded cities, poorly funded health sector and lack of testing facilities. The U.N. Economic Commission for Africa in April predicted up to 300,000 deaths this year if the virus couldn’t be contained on the continent. Yet it was the U.S, with its superior health system, that hit that grim milestone first, and so far, Africa has been largely spared the worst of the devastation experienced by the rest of the world. As of Dec. 29, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was reporting total 2.6 million cases and 63,300 deaths for a population of 1.2 billion. That’s roughly one case for every 500 people, compared to one in 20 in the U.S.
However, those numbers might not actually reflect the reality on the ground. Overall, testing for COVID-19 cases has been comparatively limited on the continent, which could be contributing to lower case numbers. South Africa, which has the highest testing rate in the region, was only performing 0.68 tests a day per 1,000 people in mid-December, compared to 4.3 in the U.S., according to Our World in Data (Denmark, which has the highest test rate, is currently performing 15.1 tests per 1,000). That might explain why the continent has lower-than-expected reported case rates.
As for COVID-19-related deaths, one way to estimate the true impact of the virus is to look at total excess deaths this year, calculated by comparing the overall mortality figures in 2020 to previous annual averages. Those figures in South Africa point to the possibility of a higher number of deaths from COVID-19 than the official records show. A report by the South African Medical Research Council noted that South Africa saw some 17,000 extra deaths from natural causes between early May and mid-July, a 59% increase in excess deaths compared to what was expected over the same period. However, the Africa CDC says there has been no indication that a large number of COVID-19 deaths have been missed.
If official numbers are to be believed, the African continent trails much of the rest of the world when it comes to case fatality rates, and there have been fewer scenes of overwhelmed hospitals and funeral parlors coming from the continent compared to other parts of the globe. Nevertheless, some countries across the continent are currently seeing increases in COVID-19 cases amid concerns of a second wave. South Africa has seen a sharp increase recently, amid evidence that a new variant has been detected; President Cyril Ramaphosa announced new restrictions on Monday, citing the daily record of 14,790 infections recorded on Christmas Day, which he described as “a cause for alarm.” Over the weekend, the country’s total recorded cases since the start of the pandemic reached one million at the weekend.

The Nigerian government on Monday announced new measures for passengers traveling into the country from the UK and South Africa in the wake of a surge in COVID-19 cases locally and the detection of new COVID-19 variants in those countries.Passengers from those two countries will have to present a pre-departure permit to fly/QR code and evidence of a negative COVID-19 OCR result done within 96 hours of beginning their journey.
Passengers from the two countries will also be received and processed separately by public health authorities upon arrival into Nigeria. Additionally, all such passengers will be required to self-isolate for seven days after arrival after which they will have to undertake a COVID-19 PCR test.
Passengers who will test positive for COVID-19 thereafter will be referred for isolation and further management while those who test negative will be allowed to leave isolation.
Moreover, a dedicated register of arrivals from the UK and South Africa will be opened for improved surveillance and active enforcement of the measures.
All airlines which have passengers traveling from the UK and South Africa are subject to the regulations, which take effect from December 28.
The Nigerian government also set out stiff penalties for airlines which fail to comply with the regulations.
Airlines face fines of $3,500 for each defaulting passenger and may be compelled to return such non-Nigerian passengers to their point of origin.
Airlines also face suspension from operating in the country if there are repeated violations of the regulations.
South Africa recently announced a new variant of COVID-19 (501.V2) was driving the country’s current resurgence of the disease, resulting in greater numbers of confirmed cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
The variant is dominant among new confirmed infections in South Africa, according to health officials and scientists leading the country’s virus strategy.
Meanwhile, the UK variant, dubbed B.1.1.7, has rapidly become the dominant strain in cases of COVID-19 in parts of southern England, and has been linked to an increase in hospitalization rates, especially in London and in the adjacent county of Kent.
As of December 28, Nigeria has reported more than 84,000 confirmed cases and more than 1,200 deaths.

The virus is everywhere. It's terrible. I hope our government can make the right decision in the critical period every time!

A Temple University student says she experienced a life-threatening heart condition weeks after recovering from a mild case of Covid-19.
In a Facebook post from Dec. 8, Madeline Neville writes that she returned to her family home for the Thanksgiving holiday after being diagnosed with Covid-19 in late October.
"I was feeling completely normal and was able to put my COVID experience behind me," Neville wrote. "After all, I am a twenty year old girl in good health. I am the subset of the population that is supposed to be best equipped to able to handle COVID."
Neville, who lives in Philadelphia and is now 21, said that she tested negative before returning home. But soon after, she was hit by a second wave of symptoms.
"I experienced such intense chest pain, shortness of breath, and a slew of other horrible symptoms that came on suddenly and as a complete surprise," she wrote.
In her post, Neville said that she was eventually airlifted to a Philadelphia hospital where she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.
"I have been hospitalized for the past nine days, where I struggled everyday to do even the most menial tasks like going to the bathroom and showering on my own, brushing my own teeth and hair, or even walking 10 steps," she wrote.
Neville said her doctors told her she had myocarditis, a swelling of the heart muscle that has been linked to Covid-19.
Recently, doctors have raised the question of whether athletes should be required to undergo additional screenings before returning to gameplay following recovery from the disease because of the risk of myocarditis.
"They were throwing around this term called 'multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children,'" Neville said.
The CDC has recently written that the Covid-linked syndrome has recently been observed in adults.
When she returned home from the hospital in early December, Neville's social media was abuzz with posts from people angry over new statewide Covid "mitigation efforts" in Pennsylvania announced by Gov. Tom Wolf, who had recently shared his own positive diagnosis.
"People were just saying some choice things, kind of discrediting the virus, saying that everybody who thinks that the states should be shut down are stupid," Neville said. "I had seen one too many that night."
So she decided to share her story publicly.
"I just felt like if I was sitting on my story, there was no point to me just keeping it to myself when I just felt like people needed to hear it," Neville said.
Speaking to NBC News over the telephone on Monday, Neville said her condition improves each day and that during her last cardiologist appointment she learned that her heart function is back to normal level.
"The only concern is because of how inflamed my heart was and still kind of is, they're worried about it scarring, so they put me on medications to prevent the scarring," she said.
When she first shared her story on Facebook in early December, Neville wrote that she hoped that her story might serve as a "reality check" for some of her peers who "take their health for granted."
"I know that I did," Neville wrote. "I believed that my youth and health would allow me to make it through any run in I had with the virus relatively unscathed."
"However, as someone who has been on the ass end of it, I wish I had chosen inconvenience over jeopardizing my health. I wish I had been more careful in my social interactions prior to contracting COVID, to save myself, my family, and my friends the pain of uncertainty regarding whether or not this illness would kill me."
"This has been my reality this week, and you can rest assured I simply could not care less which restaurants are open anymore. ... I am just thankful to be alive at home with my family," Neville wrote.

With a second COVID-19 vaccine now authorized for emergency use, the top military official with Operation Warp Speed says a combined 7.9 million doses of vaccine are ready to be distributed next week.
U.S. Army General Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer of the federal vaccine effort, briefed reporters on Saturday, less than a day after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccine developed by the biotech company Moderna. Perna said efforts to distribute the Moderna vaccine were already underway, with the first doses scheduled to arrive at sites across the U.S. on Monday.
Perna said the Moderna vaccine will be delivered alongside of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — which was authorized on Dec. 11 — and continue throughout the week.
"Just as we did last week with Pfizer, we are prepared," Perna said, noting that Moderna had already moved its vaccine to distribution centers and that shipments would begin rolling out as early as Sunday.
"Jurisdictions have already ordered the vaccine and we know it is going to
3,700-plus locations with more requests coming in every day based on
allocations," Perna said.
Pfizer said it had sent 2.9 million doses of its vaccine throughout the country last week. In total, Perna said, Operation Warp Speed is on track to ship 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine by year's end.
Perna also responded to complaints from several states that their allocations of the Pfizer vaccine for next week were being cut — in some cases by as much as 40% or more. The general issued an apology and said there had been a miscommunication. When it came to make a final tally of what could be sent to states, he said, fewer doses were releasable than originally thought.
"When we had to decide what was going to eventually be shipped out, I had to
lower the allocations to meet the releasable doses that were presented to me," Perna said.
The general said he hoped the process for distributing COVID vaccines would become more predictable as shipments continued.
The FDA's authorization on Friday of Moderna's vaccine was expected. The addition of another vaccine gives a leg-up to efforts to curb the pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 in the U.S. alone.
An FDA analysis this week found Moderna's vaccine to be 94% effective, similar to Pfizer's vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine is already being administered to health care workers and long-term care facility residents across the country, who are the priority groups included in the first phase of distribution.
Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called an emergency meeting this weekend to vote on whether to recommend the Moderna vaccine. The group signed off on the Pfizer vaccine on Dec. 12.
On Saturday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend the use of the vaccine for persons aged 18 and older. That vote, with 11 for and three recusals, paves the way for the CDC to issue official guidance on the Moderna vaccine.
The committee meets again on Sunday to vote on which priority groups should have access to coronavirus vaccines in the next phase of distribution.

We should cherish every hard won vaccine.

This second wave have long been expected even when for all intent and purpose we didn’t even see a first wave. Our leaders in this space have simply been playing the monkey running around like headless chickens and causing the economy and the psychology of most Nigerians havoc in their sheer incompetence.
This Covid thing is like the Hurricane that hits landfall decapitated. When the wave first started in China we had thought this was another Ebola coming towards us and we started the usual panic. But this time there was confidence, we had wrestled Ebola to a stand down thanks to the brave matriarch who gave up her life and rightly so has been immortalized by the brilliant Bolanle Austen Peters.
This virus hit landfall via a lone Italian who came in and went straight to Ewekoro. The brave and brilliant Professor in Lagos who spearheaded the fight worked courageously and pronto in weeks we had started discharging patients and the world  was amazed. Granted we did not really understand the nature of the Virus and as such had to deal with it with enormous care we joined the world in a massive unprecedented lockdown which saw the economy grind into a halt with unprecedented job losses and other massive effects.
But wait the figures were not adding up. The expected infection rate going by our situation was not adding up.  It just was not climbing and worse still the mortality rate was less than 2%. Far lower than the mortality rate of the usual. But this did not make us calm down and look at this Virus and its local situation but No we continued with our Copy and paste solution which was not helping the situation as the figures just did not add up.
They made a 75,000 infection rate prediction by June 2020 , we are just getting there now in December following an unprecedented incompetence in the culling and handling of the matter. Mortality rate is still less than 2,000 making this Covid thing almost like a joke if you see that 59,000 Nigerian mothers died last year from child birth making us the world leaders in that space.
People are now trying to draw a thread between the emergence of vaccination and the sudden spike in the figures. With countries like America, UK and Germany struggling with the pandemic, Nigeria’s figures will be a joke where urgent distribution of the vaccines are being discussed. So, what other way than to drive the frenzy, stoke up the figures in a futile bid to justify whatever resources that will be driven towards that procurement.
That is the word on the street and I must confess that I am inclined to think that way. The Endsars rallies and riots which saw Nigerians throw out the protocols and come on the streets did not throw up this spike, it is now almost two months after that we are now seeing spike, mbok where or what is generating this spike.

CHICAGO, Dec 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday that it confirmed the first known case of the coronavirus in a wild animal, a mink.
The discovery increases concerns about outbreaks in mink as the virus has killed more than 15,000 farmed mink in the United States since August.
Global health officials are investigating the potential risk the animals may pose to people after Denmark last month embarked on a plan to eliminate its farmed mink population of 17 million, warning that a mutated coronavirus strain could move to humans.
The USDA said in a notice that it confirmed the case in a “free-ranging, wild mink” in Utah as part of wildlife surveillance around infected farms.
Several animals from different wildlife species were sampled and all tested negative, the USDA added.
The agency said it notified the World Organisation for Animal Health of the recent case but said there is no evidence the virus has been widespread in wild populations around infected mink farms.
“To our knowledge, this is the 1st free-ranging, native wild animal confirmed with SARS-CoV-2,” the USDA said in the notice.
The virus has also been found in zoo tigers and household cats and dogs.

Asecond wave of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is forcing some European and Asian countries to implement lockdowns that could hurt the global market and many sub-Saharan African economies. In places like California, Germany and South Korea a renewed lockdown which could last till early January is being put in place, a recent report shows.
The United States (U.S), particularly, California is the world’s biggest oil consumer, followed by China, Japan and India. According to the report, U.S. gasoline consumption fell during the Thanksgiving holiday week to the lowest in more than 20 years. This has been attributed to reduced travel during the pandemic.
Also, oil prices fell around 1 percent on Monday as surging coronavirus cases and heightened tensions between the United States and China undermined the positive impact from an OPEC+ deal on production. Experts believe this could have a huge impact on the spending power of oil-dependent sub-Saharan African countries like Nigeria & Angola as a hike in the price of the dollars is expected.
During the second quarter of 2020, most African countries were forced to request financial aid from international lenders to pad up their national budget. This was largely due to COVID-19 induced lockdowns and a price war between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies OPEC+. Thus, leading to a sharp decline in the cost of oil. 
When the global oil price slumped in Q1, the price of the dollar sharply rose, too. As strict lockdowns were imposed around the world because of the pandemic, Africa lost billions in export revenues. With the projected contraction of growth, Africa could suffer GDP losses of between $145.5 billion (baseline) and $189.7 billion (worst case) in 2020. 


It's really a sad thing, because the United States has made some wrong measures in the covid-19 environment, resulting in many things that are irreparable.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former minister of finance, has assured Nigeria and other African countries of access to COVID-19 vaccines as from the end of January through the first quarter of 2021, a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday.
The statement quoted Mrs Okonjo-Iweala as disclosing this at a closed-door meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama in Abuja.
“As long as one person has it in the world, no one is safe. And that is why poorer countries, lower middle-income countries like Nigeria, need to get it as quickly as possible,” she was quoted as saying.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala is currently the African Union Special Envoy on mobilising international economic support for the continental fight against COVID-19 and Nigeria’s candidate for the Office of the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation.
She disclosed that the international initiative involved the World Health Organisation, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), GAVI and the international community, to get vaccines delivered to developing and poorer countries, in an affordable manner and quickly.
According to her, the Pfizer vaccine and the AstraZeneca one were presently being negotiated so that poor countries do not have to stand in a queue behind rich countries.
The former finance minister described Africans as blessed, for not having the same incidence rate of COVID-19 like other continents, but warned African nations against complacency.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala recalled that a platform called the COVAX facility had been developed with 186 countries on board, saying that the side interested in serving the poor countries had 92 countries, for which resources have been raised to try and get the vaccines to them quickly.
“So, the Pfizer vaccine, the AstraZeneca, those are being negotiated now so that poor countries don’t have to stand in line behind rich countries.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in Indiana now ranks as one of the worst in the country. This comes after the state reported another 5.700 cases on 42 deaths on Monday.
The Hoosier state is second-worst in terms of cases per 100,000 residents in the past seven days, trailing only Rhode Island, according to data compiled by the New York Times. In terms of overall numbers, not factoring for population, the 6,910 daily case average, places Indiana No. 9 in the United States. The state also ranks No. 8 in terms of daily average deaths from COVID-19. Like many other states, Indiana had a decline in cases over the long Thanksgiving holiday, but deaths and infections are rising once again.
While the state does have a mandatory mask-wearing order, there are very few restrictions for Hoosiers. Most public places are open, such as restaurants, bars and movie theaters, which are all considered highest risk for contracting COVID. The state has placed limits on public gatherings. There are no limits on the number of people allowed in shops and malls.In Northwest Indiana, hospitals are stressed to the limit. The number of available ICU beds remains below 50 for the entire five-county region, which has a population of around 800,000. The region reported 716 new cases and two deaths. Lake County, which accounts for more than half of the region’s population, accounted for 468 of those cases, and no deaths.  Lake County’s test positivity rate has risen to 17.9%.
Since the start of the pandemic, a total of 6,284 Hoosiers have died of COVID-19, making it the third-leading cause of death in the state, behind heart disease and cancer.

The elimination of racial discrimination is "politically correct" in the United States, but in many cases the essence of "correctness" is lost in the form of "correctness". As far as epidemic prevention is concerned, I personally think that applying the same isolation measures as white people to Indians is true racial equality. Why has the infection rate and death rate of people of color in the United States been higher than that of whites since the outbreak of the epidemic is a question worth considering.

Weddings across much of Africa are typically lavish events filled with hundreds of people. But with social distancing, limits on guests, and financial pressures, this year just wasn't the same for brides and grooms.
Weddings in Africa are a huge event in many countroes. Families of the happy couple are expected to plan for months to throw an elaborate ceremony for hundreds of guests with mountains of food and live music, regardless of their financial status.
There are also often two ceremonies: the traditional one followed by a Western church wedding, which drives the cost up even more.
But the coronavirus has put a damper on the wedding expectations of many Africans.
During the pandemic's peak, a swath of African countries limited the number of people who could gather for social events. At the same time, the restrictions hit families financially.

Professor of Haematology and Blood Transfusion, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba, Alani Akanmu, said there was the disruption of services during lockdown because it was not convenient at all for patients to access the services that were available due to the issue of transportation. He said that as a foremost institute, they had to keep in contact with patients through phone conversations and zoom and with support of a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) that established a drug collection centre for the members of the community.
Deputy Director of Prevention, Care and Treatment, Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN), Dr. Helen Omuh, said due to the initial mitigation measures instituted by the government, access to HIV services by people living with HIV (PLHIV) was affected and most patients could not visit the health facilities for their drugs and laboratory tests due to movement restriction and fear of COVID 19.
She said that poor quality data and low capacity for data management had persisted despite improvement observed with the electronic medical records system. Good quality data is required to guide decisions, policies and research. Though the drugs are free, there may be some out of pocket expenses with the national health insurance system covering less than 10 per cent of the eligible population. Political commitment for sustained funding and effective co-ordination is also a crucial challenge in managing HIV,” she said.

On January 23, 2020, the World Well being Group’s Worldwide Well being Laws (IHR) Emergency Committee suggested that “all international locations ought to be ready for containment, together with lively surveillance, early detection, isolation and case administration, contact tracing and prevention of onward unfold of 2019-nCoV an infection, and to share full information with WHO.” On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a public well being emergency of worldwide concern.
In 2017, through the WHO’s Joint Exterior Analysis (JEE) of IHR core capacities (an unbiased, collaborative multi-sectoral effort to evaluate a rustic’s capability to forestall, detect, and reply to public well being dangers), Nigeria scored poorly each in prevention and response.
These scores recommend that Nigeria shouldn’t be ready to answer the present COVID-19 pandemic. That is most clearly evident from the low testing charges for COVID-19 within the nation. Nigeria at present has the capability to check solely 2,500 samples a day, and simply half of those are literally administered every day due to the scarcity of human assets, testing kits, and laboratories, and case definition for testing that prioritizes symptomatic circumstances and their contacts. As of June 30, solely 138,462 samples had been examined in Nigeria for a inhabitants of 200 million; in distinction, South Africa—a rustic of 58 million folks—has already carried out 1,630,008 assessments.
Nigeria had simply 350 ventilators and 350 ICU beds for its total inhabitants earlier than the outbreak. In April 2020, the nation acquired 100 extra ventilators, however given the rising caseload, this won’t be sufficient. There was a steady rise within the variety of circumstances and deaths in Nigeria, and no flattening of the curve has but been noticed.

The spread of novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) in Nigeria continues to record significant increases as the latest statistics provided by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control reveal Nigeria now has 67,412 confirmed cases.
On the 29th of November 2020, 82 new confirmed cases were recorded in Nigeria, having carried out a total daily test of 7,101 samples across the country.
According to the NCDC, the 82 new cases were reported from 11 states- Lagos (48), Rivers (, Kwara (6), Yobe(6), Katsina (5), FCT(3), Nasarawa(2), Plateau (1), Ogun (1), Kano (1) and Osun(1)
Meanwhile, the latest numbers bring Lagos state total confirmed cases to 23,238, followed by Abuja (6,770), Plateau (3,858), Oyo (3,721), Kaduna (3,064), Rivers (2,985), Edo (2,696), Ogun (2,223), Delta (1,824), Kano (1,795), Ondo (1,728), Enugu (1,332),  Kwara (1,102), Ebonyi (1,055), Katsina (1,030), Osun (946), Gombe (938). Abia (926), Bauchi (770), and Borno (745).
Imo State has recorded 662 cases, Benue (496), Nasarawa (493), Bayelsa (445),  Ekiti (365), Akwa Ibom (339), Jigawa (331), Niger (298), Anambra (285), Adamawa (261), Sokoto (165), Taraba (159), Yobe (100), Kebbi (93), Cross River (90), Zamfara (79), while Kogi state has recorded 5 cases only.

Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development reportedly approved the training camps for athletes and officials, which are being held in Lagos and Abuja.
The Ministry’s director of elite athletes and competitions, Simon Ebhojaiye, told Nigerian newspaper The Guardian that the camps will help athletes following the coronavirus-enforced halt in activities.
"[The] exercise is poised to bring back our athletes to their individual sports having been on recess for so long due to COVID-19 pandemic," Ebhojaiye told The Guardian.
"This local camping, which is coming at the resumption of sporting activities in Nigeria, is geared towards early preparations of athletes who have qualified for the Games.
"All camps are to strictly observe the COVID-19 sports code and resumption protocol already developed by the Ministry in both training and accommodation venues."
Abuja is reportedly holding the camps for taekwondo, rowing, and Para-rowing, as well as canoeing and Para-canoeing.
Powerlifting athletes are based at the camp in Lagos.
Nigeria is expected to roll out further camps in the coming weeks for sports not covered in the first batch.
Nigeria trialed COVID-19 protocols earlier this month with a view to allowing sporting activities to resume.
The successful holding of the trial allowed the camps to receive the green light to take place.
Nigeria has struggled at the Olympic Games recently, sending 77 athletes to Rio 2016 but only claiming a bronze medal in the men's football competition.
The country did not earn a single medal at London 2012.
Nigeria has won a total of 25 medals at the Olympic Games, including three golds.

More than two-thirds of the over 58 million people infected by COVID-19 across the world have recovered from the disease after treatment.
The figure indicates the level of success countries and health professionals have recorded in containing the virus.
As of Monday morning, over 40 million recoveries have been recorded by worldometer.info, a coronavirus tracking platform.
According to the data, 40,765,521 patients won their battle against the disease.
Although people who recover from a viral infection often develop immunity against the same disease, it remains unclear whether this is the case with COVID-19 infection.
The World Health Organization had said that one-time infection of the coronavirus has not yet been proven to result in immunity.
Despite increased recoveries, the death toll has remained high.
COVID-19, the potentially dangerous pneumonia-like disease caused by the coronavirus and said to have emanated from a local Wuhan market to spread to over 200 countries, has also claimed almost 1.4 million lives.
That has exceeded the 290,000 to 650,000 annual deaths linked to influenza.

When the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak in New York in mid-April, there were about 95 hospitalizations per 100,000 in a region with many large hospital systems. These hospital systems had some excess capacity and had the resources and surge plans to create more capacity by repurposing hospital units to COVID-19 care, freeing up more staff through cancellation of elective surgeries and procedures, and shifting health care workers from ambulatory care settings to hospital work. 
In addition, a significant number of physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists came to New York City from around the country to volunteer or work as paid supplementary staff to help meet the demand for care created by the surge of COVID-19 patients.
Despite these efforts, the hospital systems were pushed to their limits, forced to move from providing conventional care to crisis care.
South Dakota's COVID struggles
In South Dakota today, there are about 65 hospitalizations per 100,000 people. At first glance, it appears that this number is significantly lower than the COVID-19 patient surge New York experienced at the city's peak. But the landscape of emergency services, hospitals and intensive care capacity is vastly different in South Dakota compared with New York City.
Hospital care is delivered primarily in small rural Critical Access Hospitals, often about 25 beds with limited or nonexistent intensive care capability. COVID-19 patients and other critically ill patients who need to be cared for in an intensive care unit are typically transferred to larger regional hospitals, which can be hundreds of miles from the small critical hospitals.
Intensive care physicians, critical care nurses and other specialists are essential to the care of COVID-19 patients, and these health care workers are in short supply in rural health care systems. 
As cases continue to rise, South Dakota is facing the same type of mismatch between resources and demand that occurred in New York City at the peak this spring. If we don’t get control of the cases, people will continue to get critically ill, and hospitals will continue to be overwhelmed in the state. The standard of care needed to battle COVID-19 will not be able to be maintained, and crisis standards of care will have to be implemented in either an organized or less desirable haphazard manner. This could mean, for instance, ”battlefield triage,” rationing life sustaining care for those least likely to benefit.

The United Nations (UN) said Tuesday it is releasing $100 million in aid for seven countries that include Nigeria and Ethiopia to help them avoid famine because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ethiopia, where fighting has broken out between the central government and the northern Tigray region, will receive one-fifth of this money. The other recipients will be Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Yemen. “No one should view a slide into famine as an inevitable side effect of this pandemic,” said Mark Lowcock, UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs.

“If it happens it is because the world has allowed it to happen. Famine can be prevented. But we have to act in time to make a difference,” Lowcock said in a statement. “Right now, more money for the aid operation is the quickest and most efficient way to support famine-prevention efforts.” On a planet where there is more than enough food for everyone, Lowcock wrote, “famines result in agonizing and humiliating deaths. They fuel conflict and war.”