Chris Reimer had never heard of Leopold, Mo., when he found himself rushing down a winding, two-lane road toward the rural, 65-person community in February.
Reimer, a social media manager in St. Louis, had made a split-second decision when he saw a local television reporter tweet about a 2,000-dose COVID-19 vaccination clinic opening to anyone after 3 p.m. that day.
"I jumped in the car and started driving south," Reimer says, though the clinic was two hours away in Leopold. "I definitely saw other cars [on the interstate highway] and thought to myself, 'I wonder if they're going the same place I am?' because we were all driving perhaps a little too quickly."
Reimer arrived just before the clinic's 5 p.m. cut-off time, and says he was thrilled when National Guardsmen running the clinic filled out his vaccine card.
"This is really happening! I am getting the vaccine," he recalls thinking, along with a pang of guilt. At 50 years old, Reimer didn't belong to any priority groups eligible for vaccination at that time in Missouri.


COVID-19 has exposed many problems that we have overlooked before, such as these elderly people in rural areas. The medical conditions in the rural areas are much worse than in the cities. If there is still a gap in the availability of vaccines, then these elderly people are too pitiful.

Vaccine eligibility in the United States has been expanded, as of today, all Americans 16 years and older are now eligible for the vaccine. Earlier this month, President Biden moved up the deadline for states to make all American adults eligible for the vaccine to April 19th from the original deadline of May 1st. The White House announced a media blitz to raise awareness about vaccine eligibility. The blitz will include more than 30 local media interviews across the country. There will also be a series of national media hits that feature the nations top doctors. Last evening, President Biden and former President Barack Obama joined a plethora of celebrities to urge Americans to get vaccinated during an hour long television program. Biden will also tape a PSA to air on social media and Vice President Kamala Harris will promote eligibility on her social media platforms as well. She is in Greensboro, North Carolina today for an interview with ‘Carolina Peacemaker’, an African-American newspaper as part of the blitz. Also, Dr. Anthony Fauci will tape a series of short videos for Snapchat.

During the lockdown in Lagos, Nigeria, I joined a humanitarian team to distribute food to poor people in the urban slums. The project was launched because food was not available and accessible to millions of people in Africa’s most populous city.
Given my background in agricultural innovation, I set about trying to understand why the supply of food was so poor – a problem that I know preceded COVID-19. My question took me back into the deep structural flaws that continue to plague Nigeria’s agricultural and food systems. I identified challenges that lie at the heart of food and nutrition insecurity in the whole country, especially the urban slums.
Firstly, that small-scale farmers – who represent over 70% of the agri-food supply chain – have limited access to market. Nigeria’s infrastructure is in a state of disrepair, including roads. And there are no urban and rural freight networks and no long-term logistics plan that guarantees healthy function between strategic locations. There is also limited innovation in the agricultural sector.
I concluded that Nigeria needs a total overhaul of the policies that determine the agricultural sector’s agri-food supply chain. Innovations in technologies – including handling, processing, storage, refrigeration and transport – would be an indispensable component of these policies.

The shortage of food has brought us a huge panic. Such a blockade has affected our lives to a large extent. The government should pay attention to the problem of food.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron did an internship in Nigeria at the turn of the century; and he appears determined to stay engaged with the country – an official visit in 2018 was marked with a trip to a famous Lagos nightclub.
But while culture does count, economic diplomacy remains the heart of the affair. There have recently been a flurry of Franco-Nigerian activity:
In 2020, French energy company Axens signed a deal to help on the multibillion-dollar refinery being built for Nigeria’s BUA Group in 2020.
French oil giant Total’s Egina platform, a 200,000 barrel-per-day facility, began production in December 2018.
France is also the second-largest bilateral creditor to Nigeria, after China, through the Agence Française de Développement. It has invested more than €2bn ($2.4bn) in the past 10 years, financing 35 development projects, according to government officials.
Riester, France’s minister of foreign trade and attractiveness, says in an interview with The Africa Report in Abuja that he wants to see “more partnerships between our two countries, more French companies investing here, more Nigerian companies to invest in France and more exports and imports between our two countries.”
Solidifying ties
Riester was in Abuja and Lagos as part of a two-day visit to Nigeria on 13-14 April. He met with his counterpart, Nigeria’s minister of industry, trade and investment Otunba Niyi Adebayo, along with representatives of Fanmilk/Danone, CFAO, Spie, Biogaran and Vinci Energies.
In Lagos, he met the members of the Franco-Nigerian Business Dialogue, including its president, BUA Group chairman Abdul Samad Rabiu, Access Bank managing director Herbert Wigwe and Dangote Group chairman Aliko Dangote. The minister also visited the Bolloré-run Tin Can Island port concession, as well as the Eko Atlantic City project.
The visit was an attempt to build on the priorities set by President Macron during his official visit to Nigeria in July 2018. It was also a sign of Paris’s “willingness to change the narrative of the relations between Africa and France”, says Riester.
Nigeria is France’s top commercial partner in sub-Saharan Africa, with bilateral trade between the two countries nearing $5bn in 2019. With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, that figure fell by $2.3bn in 2020, according to Riester. He says wants a win-win situation where Nigerian companies can set up in France, just as more than 100 French companies have done in Nigeria.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that the coronavirus variant discovered in Brazil has become the second most dominant strain of the virus in the United States.
Per The Washington Post, the CDC data showed that the P.1 variant from Brazil is the No. 2 strain in the U.S.
“At least 434 people in the United States have been infected with the variant, which has devastated Brazil, with the largest number of cases found in Massachusetts, Illinois and Florida,” according to The Washington Post.
According to the CDC, the “variants have mutations in the virus genome that alter the characteristics and cause the virus to act differently in ways that are significant to public health (e.g., causes more severe disease, spreads more easily between humans, requires different treatments, changes the effectiveness of current vaccines).”
As I wrote for the Deseret News, the coronavirus strain discovered in the United Kingdom became the most dominant strain of the virus in the U.S. earlier this week.
“Based on our most recent estimates from CDC surveillance, the B.1.1.7 variant is now the most common lineage circulating in the United States,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York magazine reports.
Reuters reports that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has been shown to stop the Brazil variant, according to new research.
“Blood taken from people who had been given the vaccine neutralized an engineered version of the virus that contained the same mutations carried on the spike portion of the highly contagious P.1 variant first identified in Brazil,” per Reuters.
Moderna and Pfizer use similar mRNA technology for their vaccines, so there’s a chance the Moderna vaccine would neutralize the Brazil variant in the same way.

It's the third time in a year that Nigeria’s doctors have gone on strike over working conditions.
With high unemployment rates, inflation, ongoing insecurity in various parts of the country, and the COVID-19 pandemic on its issue list, the last thing Nigeria needs is a doctors’ strike.
But that is exactly what happened on Thursday as the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) began an indefinite strike to protest poor working conditions and pay.
Resident doctors in Nigeria are medical school graduates training and working as specialists, and make up almost half of all working doctors in the country. This is the third time the doctors have gone on strike in the past year.
This also comes as the country rolls out vaccines, acquired via the COVAX Facility — led by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — to frontline health workers and the elderly, before the rest of the population.
Why are Nigerian doctors on strike?
There are many reasons behind the strike. Nigeria’s health sector is severely underfunded which means there isn’t enough money to maintain public health infrastructure or improve health worker welfare.
This has led to doctors not only being paid poorly but thousands of doctors are also being owed as much as six months’ pay. Meanwhile, despite being frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19, the Nigerian government has only offered N5,000 (~$13) as hazard allowance to the doctors.
Doctors are also protesting lack of life insurance coverage and demanding that the government reviews the law regulating Postgraduate Medical Training (PMT) in Nigeria, which was established in 1979 and has never been reviewed, according to NARD.
But the biggest reason behind these frequent doctors' strikes, arguably, is the fact that the Nigerian government has constantly failed to honour previous agreements it has made with NARD in the past to resolve these issues.
“I am aware that out-of-pocket payment for health constitutes over 70% of total health expenditure,” said President Muhammadu Buhari at the opening of a new health care facility in 2017. “My presence here today demonstrates our administration’s commitment to put [the] health of Nigerians as a top priority.”

President Joe Biden’s tax plan would hike the corporate tax rate to bring in $2.5 trillion over 15 years to fund the sweeping $2 trillion infrastructure proposal unveiled last week, according to details released Wednesday by the Treasury Department.
Ambitious in scope by any means, the Made in America Tax Plan would raise the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent, establish a sort of alternative minimum tax for high-earning corporations and attempt to close loopholes around offshoring profits.
The plan would capture $2 trillion that otherwise would “flow out of the country,” according to a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
In a speech on Wednesday, Biden said his tax plan would be more fair for middle-class Americans — a message likely to resonate with the electorate. There is clear support among voters for making behemoths in retail, technology, manufacturing and finance pay more. A recent survey by data firm Morning Consult found that roughly 60 percent of American adults think companies should be paying more in taxes — and nearly one-third of those say they “strongly agree” with higher corporate taxes.
At 28 percent, the U.S. corporate tax rate would be higher than the average statutory tax rate of 23.51 percent among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations. State taxes could push the effective rate even higher, some policy experts said.
“Increasing the rate to 28 percent, when combined with state corporate taxes, would lead the combined U.S. rate to 32.34 percent, which would be the highest among OECD and G-7,” said Ben Koltun, director of research at Beacon Policy Advisors.
Advocates who want to see the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act wholly or partially reversed, though, argue that these percentages are moot because even after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered corporate taxes to 21 percent in 2017, many companies pay far less than that — if they pay anything at all. The share of taxes U.S.-based multinationals pay on their domestic profits is less than 8 percent, according to the Treasury Department.
But that doesn’t mean big business would pay that amount.
“Now the effective tax rate will be lower for a lot of these companies because of deductions they can take,” Koltun added.
Eric Toder, institute fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, suggested the existing corporate tax structure has room for improvement.
“My view — shared by many tax experts — has always been that it is best for the government to define the measure of taxable income it thinks is appropriate instead of relying on accounting rules that were developed for a different purpose,” he said.
Some policy observers suspect the administration never intended for 28 percent to be the final number anyway, noting that Biden said, “I’m willing to negotiate that” on the percentage.
Critical Senate swing vote Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has said he doesn’t want the corporate tax rate to be raised higher than 25 percent, and Republicans have been united in their opposition.

So few people came for COVID-19 vaccinations in one county in North Carolina that hospitals there now allow anyone 16 or older to get a shot, regardless of where they live. Get a shot, get a free doughnut, the governor said.
Alabama, which has the nation’s lowest vaccination rate and a county where only 7% of residents are fully vaccinated, launched a campaign to convince people the shots are safe. Doctors and pastors joined the effort.
On the national level, the Biden administration this week launched a “We Can Do This” campaign to encourage holdouts to get vaccinated against the virus that has claimed over 550,000 lives in the U.S.
The race is on to vaccinate as many people as possible, but a significant number of Americans are so far reluctant to get the shots, even in places where they are plentiful. Twenty-five percent of Americans say they probably or definitely will not get vaccinated, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
They are leery about possible side effects. They tend to be Republican, and they are usually younger and less susceptible to becoming critically ill or dying if they catch COVID-19.
There’s been a slight shift, though, since the first weeks of the nation’s largest-ever vaccination campaign, which began in mid-December. An AP-NORC poll conducted in late January showed that 67% of adult Americans were willing to get vaccinated or had already received at least one shot. Now that figure has climbed to 75%.
Although there are a lot of vaccines now available, some people are still unwilling to get vaccinated. This is not a correct decision. In a virus superpower like the United States, is there a better solution for not getting vaccinated?

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy warned that "we're in for a long, hot summer" if the wave of Covid-19 infections battering the state gets worse, but the federal government doesn't appear to be making any immediate move to send extra vaccine doses his way.
More younger people are being hospitalized with coronavirus infections, but New Jersey hasn't started giving shots to residents under age 55, as neighboring New York and other states have been doing, even though 18.68 percent of the state's population has already been fully vaccinated, according to Becker's Hospital Review.
"Heading into April, it is our expectation that vaccine allocations from the federal government will quickly scale up," Murphy's deputy press secretary, Alexandra Altman, said Thursday by email. "When we have enough supply from the federal government, everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one."
New Jersey will, in fact, get more doses every week, a White House official said. But so will every other state.
The Biden administration is expanding the number of pharmacies offering the vaccines so 90 percent of people in the U.S. will be within 5 miles of a vaccination site, the official said. And this week, the government is opening a mass vaccination site able to dispense up to 6,000 doses a day in Newark on the campus of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
But the government will continue to base how many doses states get on population, not infection rates or other data, the official said.
New Jersey, like all the other states, needs to follow federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations and identify hot spots, double down on mitigation efforts and consider shifting vaccine supplies to parts of the state that need them the most, the official said.

The lack of vaccines has caused panic and disturbance of personnel. The government should make the right decision to solve this problem instead of letting it go.

Pfizer says its Covid-19 vaccine is safe and 100 percent effective in preventing the illness in teenagers ages 12 to 15.
"This is exactly the news that we hoped to hear," said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Creech was not involved in the Pfizer research.
The vaccine, given in two doses three weeks apart, is already cleared for emergency use in people ages 16 and up.
The company plans to request emergency use authorization for 12- to 15-year-olds in the coming weeks, "with the hope of starting to vaccinate this age group before the start of the next school year," Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.
"We share the urgency to expand the authorization of our vaccine to use in younger populations and are encouraged by the clinical trial data from adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15," Bourla said.
The findings, which were announced Wednesday in a news release, have not been peer-reviewed.
More than 2,200 young teenagers were enrolled in the Pfizer vaccine trial in the U.S. About half got the real shots, while the others got placebo shots. (The adult trial was much larger, with more than 43,000 participants.)
Pfizer said 18 cases of Covid-19 were reported among the teenagers who got the placebo, compared with none in those who got the real vaccine.
Side effects generally mirrored those in adults, such as a sore arm, fatigue and headache.
Uğur Şahin, CEO of Pfizer's German partner, BioNTech, said in the statement that the results were "encouraging given the trends we have seen in recent weeks regarding the spread of the B.1.1.7" variant of the coronavirus, which has been shown to be more transmissible.
What's more, teens in the trial who got the vaccine were later found to have levels of neutralizing antibodies — needed to wipe out the virus — similar to levels in older teens and young adults who had been vaccinated.
"Will it be 100 percent efficacious in the real world? Who's to say? But what we know is that when we move this vaccine down into teenagers, it behaves the exact same way that it does in adults, or even better," Creech said.
Pfizer's Phase 3 clinical trial in adults found that the vaccine was around 95 percent effective in preventing symptomatic illness. That ticked down slightly, to 90 percent, in real-world data released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Creech said he looks forward to seeing the full data from the trial.
"There may be subtle differences there that we really have to keep an eye on for children," he said. "If there are slightly higher rates of fever, or if there's slightly higher rates of muscle or joint aches, that has a different meaning in children than in adults."
Pfizer is also studying how well the vaccine works in children ages 6 months to 11 years old. The first doses in that trial were administered last week.
The safety of vaccine is the most important link in the process of vaccination, especially for special people such as children.Must ensure safety.

Over 500,000 Nigerians have received their first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines, data released by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) shows.
As of Sunday, 513,626 eligible Nigerians have been vaccinated in 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The data, published on Sunday evening, shows that Kogi State is yet to commence vaccination against the virus which has infected about 162,000 people in the country.
The head of the agency, Faisal Shuaib, had at a recent briefing said Kogi was not supplied with the vaccines because their cold store is still under repairs following vandalisation during the EndSARS protest.
Data shows that Lagos, the epicentre of the disease in Nigeria, has vaccinated 110,042 people; making it the highest in the country.
This is followed by Ogun with 47,507, Kaduna-38,063, Bauchi- 32,482, Katsina- 28,918, and Kwara- 26,473.
The states with the lowest number of vaccinated people are Abia-22, Taraba-111 and Kebbi-532,

he United Arab Emirates has stated that inbound flights to UAE must not exceed 200 Nigerians for two weeks, as airlines may resume flight operations soon.
This was disclosed by the Embassy via a statement it issued on Thursday.
Also, the Embassy stated that its government had decided to remove the requirements for Rapid Antigen test for travelers at airports in Nigeria as part of efforts to end the stalemate with regards flights between both countries.
This is just as the country has issued some requirements for the Nigerian government to meet before the move is consolidated.
It stated, “The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Abuja presents its compliments to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Protocol Department) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with reference to the Ministry Verbal Note No. K.521/2021 dated 16th February 2021 and the Embassy’s Note Verbal No. 049/A/2021 dated 23 February 2021.
“The embassy has the honor to convey the response of the competent authorities in the UAE regarding the ongoing flight halt between the UAE and Nigeria as well as the travel requirements for travelers to the UAE
“The UAE Government has decided to remove the requirement for the Rapid Antigen test at the airports in Nigeria while demanding the following requirements:
“Number of passengers on inbound flights to the UAE must not exceed 200 passengers for two weeks. Only direct flights between the UAE and Nigeria are allowed. Passengers need to present a valid negative PCR test conducted within 48 hours before boarding.
“Provide the embassy with updated list of the approved PCR test centers by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the importance of ensuring the accuracy of the passengers’ information, contact details and place of stay during their visit in UAE.”

(CNN) – From burned-out medical staff to frustration over vaccine supplies, a new government report paints a dire picture of America’s health care system after a year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general, more than 300 hospitals across the country were surveyed in late February on how the pandemic has impacted them.
Hospitals reported that long hours, more shifts, time away from family and increased responsibilities caused by the pandemic left staff “exhausted, mentally fatigued and sometimes experiencing possible PTSD.”
Some administrators also pointed to the increased deaths, including among co-workers.
Others said since hospital employees were the only people permitted to be present at the time of a patient’s death due to pandemic restrictions, it took a significant toll on medical teams.
Administrators also sounded alarms over patients putting off routine care and checkups, including cancer screenings and cardiology tests.

A new report from the U.S. intelligence community warns of future, unspecified, violence committed by domestic extremists, who have been emboldened by the siege on the U.S. Capitol and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and coronavirus pandemic.
President Biden commissioned a threat assessment shortly after taking office. An unclassified summary of the findings, issued by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, was released Wednesday. The full, classified report was sent to the White House and Congress.
It concludes that racially and ethnically motivated extremists, such as white supremacists and those tied to violent militias, are considered the "most lethal" threats. Lone offenders or smaller cells of extremists are more likely than organizations to carry out attacks, and are proving harder for law enforcement to track.
The threat of militia extremist groups increased last year and is expected to continue to heighten throughout 2021, the report said. That's because of "sociopolitical factors" motivating these groups, "such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the US Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence."

Undoubtedly, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected economies all over the world, Nigeria inclusive. Thus as part of measures to ensure an efficient oil and gas sector post-COVID, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources will on March 29 launch the Decade of Gas Agenda, which is a critical transition to help battle global warming and function as a bridge between the dominant fossil fuel of today and the renewable energy of tomorrow.
Given the clamour for climate change and renewable energy, the need to transition from the dominant fossil fuel of today to natural gas has become imperative. In fact, the Minister
of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, noted that the federal government has strategically focused on our vast natural gas resources, as a critical transition fuel to help battle global warming and function as a bridge between the dominant fossil fuel of today and the renewable energy of tomorrow.
Noting that the federal government is strategising to ensure an efficient oil and gas sector in the post-COVID-19 era, he declared year 2021 to 2030, the decade of gas in Nigeria. According to him, FG's strategy to strengthen the Nigerian oil and gas industry in a post-COVID-19 world is to transform the national oil company into a diversified energy holding company.
"This will enable us to respond swiftly to the twin challenges of a future crash in crude oil prices and decarbonisation, by moving rapidly to becoming an energy holding company with more diverse interests.
"Consequently, we have strategically focused on our vast natural gas resources, as a critical transition fuel to help battle global warming and function as a bridge between the dominant fossil fuel of today and the renewable energy of tomorrow.
"Natural gas has the intrinsic ability to meet the increasing global requirement for cleaner primary energy use, while at the same time, enabling much needed domestic industrialisation for rapid economic growth in very few endowed countries, such as Nigeria," he said.
Sylva noted that substituting traditional white products with gas would cushion the effect of the deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector and stimulate economic growth. He added that it would further improve Nigeria's energy mix; drive investments and create enormous job opportunities for Nigerians.

The National Primary Health Care Development Agency has disclosed that it has not received any official report of serious adverse effects from any of those who have been vaccinated.
He also stated that NAFDAC has introduced the MED-SAFETY App for people to download and install on their Android and Apple devices, to report any adverse event following immunization (AEFI).
This was disclosed by NPHCDA boss, Dr. Faisal Shuaib in a social media statement on Monday evening at the Presidential Covid-19 briefing.
“As you are aware, AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed to all states and the first phase of our vaccination focusing on frontline health workers and others on essential duties have begun in earnest,” he said.
He disclosed that the vaccines have been disbursed to all state governors apart from Kogi.
On the effects of the vaccine, he said:
over 8,000 Nigerians have been administered the vaccine. We have not received any official report of serious adverse effects from any of those who have been vaccinated.
mild side effects such as pain and swelling at the site of the vaccination, are expected. This is normal with any vaccination, and we are working closely with NAFDAC to monitor any unusual adverse reactions.
NAFDAC has introduced the MED-SAFETY App for people to download and install on their Android and Apple devices, to report any adverse event following immunization (AEFI).
Shuaib added that if the brand is not safe and efficacious enough in protecting people against COVID-19, it would not have been endorsed by WHO and no country, including Nigeria.
he also disclosed that All the identified priority groups are being vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine and the second dose will be in 12 weeks.
Sigma Pensions
What you should know
Ireland has suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over fears of alleged post-jab blood.
Germany, France and Italy announced on Monday they would suspend AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine disbursement after multiple countries reported possible serious side-effects. However, the WHO said there was no proven link and people should not panic.

With direct payments hitting bank accounts as soon as this weekend, the newly passed American Rescue Plan is quickly going into effect, and President Joe Biden is headed on the road to educate the public on the benefits included in the massive $1.9 trillion law.
Next week, Biden will set off to give his sales pitch as part of the "Help is Here" tour, backed up by Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and members of his Cabinet -- all taking part in the effort to secure credit and continue to build support for the massive spending plan.

On 18 February 2021, Risk Intelligence published a set of guidelines concerning the use of privately contracted government security forces in Nigeria. The publication was released following the recent developments on the disbanding of the Secure Anchorage Area (SAA) and to provide clarity in the use of armed security (armed escort vessels) in Nigerian waters.
The use of armed guards on merchant ships has been expressly prohibited by the Nigerian Navy’s Chief of Naval Staff since 6 June 2016. This has resulted in the Nigerian Navy entering contractual relationships with private security companies which have been governed by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) since 2012 which was comprehensively revised in 2016 and again in 2019. The number of private maritime security companies – now designated as Private Maritime Logistics Support Companies (PMLSCs) – increased to 30 MoU holders
Naval personnel that are provided as armed guards will be tested for COVID-19 by the Nigerian Navy. The personnel will only be released after having tested negative. However, it is unlikely that information about tests or other health-related records will be released by the Nigerian Navy, meaning that shipowners and operators may have to rely on verbal confirmation in this context as well..

Despite spirited attempts to improve the fortunes of the healthcare sector, Nigeria has been ranked among countries with the worst health system services in Africa.
In a first-of-its-kind Health System Sustainability index report released on Tuesday, Nigeria ranked 14th with a total of 41 scores out of 18 African countries, with South Africa ranking first with 63 scores.
Tunisia came second with 58, followed behind with Morocco 55 while the Democratic Republic of Congo came last with 33 scores.
The Africa Sustainability Index launched by the FutureProofing Healthcare initiative at the 2021 Africa Health Agenda International Conference, AHAIC, also revealed that Nigeria ranked last in maternal mortality, infant vaccination, and in neonatal mortality.
The country also came 17th on births attended by skilled health staff and access to effective treatment for tuberculosis. However, the country ranked first in laboratory quality.
The Index report designed to enable data-driven decision making for health and revealed correlations between economic strength and health system sustainability showed that countries with good access to services do not always have similar scores for the quality of the health services provided.
This suggests holistic policies that prioritise access and quality are needed to meaningfully impact Universal Health Coverage, UHC, goals.
Specifically, the report notes that like Angola, Nigeria performed well in responding to emerging health threats, leading the continent in its COVID-19 response stringency and also in testing cases of tuberculosis for multiple drug resistance.
“Nigerians are also the most likely in Africa to describe accessing medical services as ‘easy’, which reflects a few barriers to treatment.
“Despite this, there is considerable room for improvement with respect to the health status of the Nigerian population; mortality rates from communicable diseases including water-borne illness and diarrhoea disease are high, and there is a high incidence of viral hepatitis and malaria.
The report recommended that health outcomes could also be improved by prioritising neonatal care, as Nigeria faces low rates of infant vaccination and high rates of maternal and neonatal mortality.
It also noted that there were considerable deficits in the availability of healthcare personnel combined with allied factors such as poor access to clean water, political instability and adult gender literacy gaps which accentuate the problems in the ecosystem.
Reacting to the report, the Chief Executive Officer of Amref and Africa Sustainability Index panellist, Githinji Gitahi, said: “Sustainable healthcare is a key element on the journey towards UHC and will impact millions of lives in Africa.
“The Sustainability Index is a useful tool in guiding stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem on where to focus efforts, make improvements and identify best practices from other countries.
“On behalf of my fellow panel members, it is our intention that this tool will spark a conversation about actions that are needed today to create more resilient, sustainable health systems in the future.”
The findings of the Africa Sustainability Index indicated that economic strength and political stability are key drivers behind overall performance in healthcare sustainability, with most of the countries that performed well in the Financing Vital Sign also doing well in the Index overall.
These countries include South Africa, Rwanda, Algeria and Ghana. The Index also reveals that all countries analysed have numerous areas of opportunity for improvement.
There are strong variations throughout the continent related to the Access and Quality Vital Signs, suggesting that targeted policies in these areas will make an impact in achieving UHC goals.
Supported by Roche, experts from organisations including Amref, the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme /(UNDP), the African Society for Laboratory Medicine and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention collaborated to develop the FutureProofing Healthcare Africa Sustainability Index.

While Nigeria has, so far, seemingly been spared the public health onslaught created by COVID-19, the country has not escaped the urgent economic crisis created by the pandemic. Worse, hardest hit have been the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), whose operations are largely traditional and dependent on physical contact with their consumers and partners.
Over 40 million MSMEs exist in Nigeria, employing over 80 percent of the country’s population and contributing about 50 percent of the country’s GDP. Now, the biggest threat to the survival of these businesses central to the economy lies in their physical approach to interacting and transacting, which has left them unprepared to take advantage of the opportunities offered by digitization as well as vulnerable to the lockdowns and distancing measures intended to stave off the health crisis.
Financial exclusion—especially among micro-entrepreneurs in the informal sector— was a national concern even before COVID-19 made in-person interactions hazardous. To address this issue, prior to the pandemic (as far back as 2017, in fact), large-scale microcredit interventions such as the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Program—in which the Bank of Industry (BOI) participates—have been targeting four economic segments—market traders, artisans, youth, and farmers—for increased financial inclusion. Technology has been key: By leveraging the power of data, biometrics, and mobile wallet systems, and with an extensive network of over 17,000 agents, BOI has been able to identify, target, and deliver micro-credit to over 2.4 million MSMEs across Nigeria. Remarkably, over 52 percent of the beneficiaries are female. In the process, the bank has onboarded an additional 500,000 beneficiaries onto the formal financial system—essentially using technology to break the barrier of access to finance and financial services for underserved demographics.
At the onset of the pandemic, our bank’s immediate objective was to ensure business continuity by deepening our MSME activities through the provision of innovative lending solutions to new customers. Through our microcredit platform, BOI’s agent network—spread across the country—operate as proxies enabling beneficiaries to efficiently interact with technology and have their businesses captured and digitized in records. These agents, equipped with smartphones loaded with the bank’s data-driven applications, engage informal entrepreneurs by capturing their Know-Your-Customer details, profiling their business, tracking transaction histories, and monitoring income and spending patterns—thus providing financial solutions tailor-made to boost financial literacy, improve credit worthiness, and support their micro-businesses with funds, especially during these difficult times.
These efforts are just the beginning of a long journey of large-scale digitization, driven by big data and continually improved algorithms, to deliver tailor-made interventions to MSMEs across the length and breadth of Nigeria.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacies in Nigeria’s healthcare policy and the need to embrace the Public-Private Partnership model in funding and managing the sector.
The Medical Director, Garki Hospital, Abuja, Dr. Adamu Onu, in an interview, expressed joy that vaccination for COVID-19 has started on a successful note, even as he hailed the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 for doing a very good job in evolving a robust and workable national response strategy.
“The PTF on COVID-19, led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha has done remarkably well in managing the pandemic, going by the rate of infection, fatality ratio and the rapid deployment of new infectious diseases laboratories across the country,” said Onu, while reviewing the collaboration between public and private hospitals in managing the Coronavirus pandemic.
Onu noted that while the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed the huge gaps in the healthcare sector, replicating the template between NISA Premier Hospital and the Federal Capital Territory Administration would provide needed improvement.
Specifically, he noted that the pandemic has provided a stress test on the nation’s healthcare system, which has exposed areas of inadequacies within the public and even private health sectors.
“Nigeria’s healthcare sector is not as strong as it should be and COVID-19 crises that came about is basically what I will call a stress test for the Nigerian health sector and in that regard, we have not done as well as we ought to have done. But based on my experience here in Garki Hospital, I can confidently say that the PPP model is a very good way to improve the healthcare sector so that when pandemics like this arrive, the capacity is there to be able to curb or handle such and take care of it.
“The PPP between NISA Premier and Garki Hospital, being the first of its kind in the Nigerian health sector, has successfully passed this test. Since its inception in 2007 till date, the hospital has not shut down for a single day, either due to strike action or any other reason and we have not sacked any staff ever since,” Onu stated.
Earlier last year, Chairman of Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, who doubles as Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, alerted that the pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to x-ray the state of the healthcare sector, which is in dire need of reforms and funding.

I don't know what the PPP mode is. But if it is more helpful to our lives, I will support the development of this model.

"At the Wole Soyinka Station, Abeokuta, another mega station, the cooling system is yet to be fixed as well as other facilities in the interior parts of the station."
An outbreak of COVID-19 among the workers involved in the Lagos-Ibadan rail project in January stalled the completion of the contract, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said.
Mr Amaechi said the Federal Government had extended the project from its original destination at Ebutte Meta to the Lagos ports.
Addressing journalists after inspecting the three mega stations and seven minor stations of the newly constructed standard gauge railway in Ibadan on Saturday, Mr Amaechi said the China Civil Engineering and Construction Corporation (CCECC), the contractor handling the project, had connected the rail line with the country's premier port in Lagos.
"It is not clear when the project is to be commissioned as the earlier commissioning date of January 2021 was shifted due to the second wave of COVID-19," he said.
" Sometime in January, over 60 workers on the site contracted COVID-19 which stalled the completion of the project.
" At the moment, it is observed that most of the mini stations are still undergoing finishing touches while the cooling systems have been fixed.
"At the Wole Soyinka Station, Abeokuta, another mega station, the cooling system is yet to be fixed as well as other facilities in the interior parts of the station," Mr Amaechi said.
According to him, this is to allow for massive freight movement and free up Lagos roads.
The minister was accompanied by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Magdalene Ajani; Chair, Governing Board of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Musa Al-Hassan and the Managing Director of NRC, Fidet Okhiria.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that they commenced the inspection from the mega station at Ebutte Meta before proceeding to the Apapa Port station.
To ascertain the level of work at the Port, the minister and his entourage took a train ride to Apapa Port which had been significantly connected to the standard gauge track.
Inside the port, the Minister frowned at the indiscriminate parking of trucks on the old narrow-gauge tracks along the corridor.
According to him, the inspection of the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge rail to all the stations is to put finishing touches to the 157km fast rail.
He said the Federal Government was committed to ensuring the completion of all train projects and to ensure that the contract bequeaths to Nigerians a train service that is comparable to anywhere in the world.
The Managing Director of Nigerian Railway Corporation, Mr Okhiria, said the current frequency of the Lagos to Ibadan train service will be increased from once daily to twice daily in two weeks time.
According to him, when it commences operation, the passenger train will stop at Agege railway station and Abeokuta enroute Ibadan and back, instead of the present trend of stopping only at Abeokuta after takeoff from Lagos.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Nigeria will this week receive its first delivery of COVID-19 vaccines with nearly four million doses set to arrive in Africa's most populous nation through the global Covax programme, officials said Sunday.
The agency in charge of the country's vaccination campaign did not say in its announcement when inoculations would begin, but the first doses are to be administered to frontline healthcare personnel.
The 3.92 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine are due to arrive on Tuesday, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency said in a statement.
"The delivery will mark the first arrival of COVID-19 vaccine in the country and make Nigeria the next West African country to benefit from the Covax facility after Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)," it said.
Over the coming months, Nigeria is to receive a total of 16 million doses through Covax, which is working to provide vaccines to poorer nations.
The World Health Organisation is one of several organisations behind Covax, which aims to deliver at least two billion doses globally by the end of the year.
Nigeria hopes to vaccinate at least 70 percent of its adult population over the next two years, but it faces immense challenges in doing so related to security and logistics in the country of some 200 million people.
It has recorded 155,417 cases and 1,905 deaths, though the figures are considered undercounted given the low number of tests administered.
A new virus variant has also been discovered in the country, but researchers have not yet determined if it is more contagious or deadly than the original strain.

The Federal Aviation Administration must address "weaknesses" in its oversight of Boeing that led the agency to miss flaws that contributed to two deadly crashes involving the Boeing 737 Max aircraft, a federal watchdog has found.
An inspector general's report from the Department of Transportation said U.S. aviation regulators do not understand the plane's flight control software that caused two devastating crashes in 2018 and 2019.
A Lion Air flight crashed off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, killing all 189 passengers and crew members. A second crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane occurred in March 2019, killing all 157 people on board.
The 737 Max was grounded for nearly two years. Boeing has since redesigned the aircraft, and the FAA has certified it to return to the skies. But the inspector general concluded the FAA's approach to analyzing the integration of new technology to existing aircraft designs must be improved.
The 63-page report released Wednesday is the product of a review ordered by former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao.
It recommends 14 changes the FAA must make "to restore confidence." The agency says it agrees with the suggestions and has plans to implement all of them, but indicated it could take five years to do so.
Boeing said in a statement in response to the report, "We have undertaken significant changes to reinforce our safety practices, and we have already made progress on several of the recommendations outlined in the final report."
The report also faulted FAA management for being "too deferential to Boeing," and urged the agency to ensure people tasked with inspecting Boeing are properly independent.
"Some FAA staff cited instances in which they thought FAA managers shared their position during internal meetings, but made decisions in Boeing's favor after discussing with the company," the report said.
The Boeing 737 Max returned to U.S. skies last December. The plane was cleared to fly again in Europe a month later.

California lawmakers passed a bill this week that would allocate $1.4 million in state funds to tracking incidents of anti-Asian hate. The legislation was drafted as part of an effort to combat the string of violent attacks against seniors that has been mirrored in Asian American communities across the U.S.
If the legislation is signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has not said whether he supports it — the money will go directly to Stop AAPI Hate, an online system where victims of bias, hate or violence can report their experiences. The form, started last March after pandemic-fueled anti-Asian bias incidents, had over 2,800 self-reports in 2020. The states with the largest share were California, with 43 percent of all incidents, and New York, with 13 percent.
“We are outraged by the disturbing incidents we’ve seen this past week where Asian American elders have been attacked in the San Francisco Bay Area,” the co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate said in a statement. “These violent assaults have a devastating impact on our community as they are part of an alarming rise in anti-Asian American hate during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
One of the measure’s key proponents, Assemblyman Phil Ting, the Budget Committee chair, introduced it as part of California’s ongoing fiscal pandemic response. He said in a statement that allocating the funds to Stop AAPI Hate will allow more research and reporting to be done about the trend and help the government get a sense of the problem.
“The rise in hate incidents against Asian Americans during the pandemic is alarming. But, we can’t solve a problem without knowing how big it is. New state funding allows the data gathering to continue, and the research will ultimately lead us to solutions that will make all communities safer,” Ting said.
Bay Area Asian communities have been hit hard by the recent violence, including Chinatowns in Oakland and San Francisco, where Asians over 60 have been targeted in robberies, burglaries and assaults. Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, was killed after beings shoved to the ground in a Jan. 31 attack captured on surveillance video. A 91-year-old man was violently shoved the same day and also made national headlines because of a video capturing the incident.
New York City, which saw a sharp increase in anti-Asian violence in 2020, has also implemented programs to support Asians in identifying and reporting bias. At a news conference Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio addressed the uptick in 2021 and spoke to the role of the Asian Hate Crimes Taskforce, which was started by the NYPD last year. After a 61-year-old man was slashed across the face on a subway train this month, the mayor said a more concerted effort would be made to monitor the subways.
“If you dare to raise your hand against a member of our Asian communities, you will suffer the consequences,” de Blasio said. “The NYPD is focused like never before.”
But critics of the task force say that more policing might do more harm than good.
"I think it's hard for us to fundamentally reconcile that that entity is going to protect our community,” Kham Moua, policy director at the civil rights organization Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, told NBC Asian America in September. “Oftentimes, violence against people of color is coming from law enforcement.”

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has approved the use of Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines in Nigeria, two days after the World Health Organisation (WHO) granted emergency use authorisation of the vaccines.
NAFDAC Director General Mojisola Adeyeye made the announcement during a live briefing on Thursday, February 18, 2021.
She also says there are three other vaccines undergoing evaluation and clinical trials.
She adds that tests have shown that AstraZeneca vaccine is effective against the UK strain of the novel coronavirus which has been detected in Nigeria.
The WHO gave the green light for the vaccines on Monday, February 15, 2021, ending a wait to have them rolled out globally through COVAX, a global initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.
The AstraZeneca/Oxford product, a viral vectored vaccine called ChAdOx1-S, has been found to have 63.09% efficacy and is suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements.
Of the 88 million AstraZeneca doses allocated to Africa for the first phase, Nigeria will receive 16 million doses, the largest allocation.
The vaccines are expected to start arriving before the end of February, according to WHO and Nigerian officials.

Shocking footage seen by MailOnline reveals the appalling state of Nigerian wet markets which have the potential to cause future disease outbreaks in humans. 
Myriad animals including pangolins, primates and sea turtles are held — both dead and alive — in confined spaces while workers fail to sanitise surfaces or tools and do not wear appropriate PPE, including gloves. 
Video also shows many of the animals being abused before they are slaughtered; photographic evidence reveals vendors boiling animals including pangolins, dogs and manatees while they are still alive.
The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan is believed to be the site of the first outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing the Covid-19 pandemic. 
This is an example of zoonotic transmission where viruses jump from animals to people and experts warn bringing a wide range of animals into a small space alongside humans in unclean conditions is a perfect recipe for disease. 
Malcolm Bennett, Professor of Zoonotic and Emerging Disease at the University of Nottingham, told MailOnline: 'If you were to want to maximise the risk of zoonotic transmission you would mix human contact with a wide range of animals — domestic and wild — and bring them together both alive and dead in the same area.'
Zoonotic diseases are not uncommon, with Covid-19, SARS, MERS, Ebola, HIV, the bubonic plague, rabies, West Nile virus and Lyme disease all originating in animals before infecting humans.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. has finalized a previously announced deal with Pfizer and Moderna for 200 million more coronavirus vaccine doses, which should provide enough to vaccinate nearly every American, President Joe Biden said Thursday.
During a visit to the National Institutes of Health, Biden said the federal government signed the final contracts Thursday afternoon for 100 million more doses of the Moderna vaccine and 100 million more from Pfizer and BioNTech.
Biden said last month that he was directing the federal government to secure the additional doses on top of the 400 million ordered during the Trump administration. With the new order in place, the U.S. will have enough supply to fully vaccinate 300 million people with the two-dose vaccines, Biden said.
It remains unclear when everyone who wants vaccinations will be able to get them given the logistical challenges of administering the shots. Biden said Pfizer and Moderna were speeding production to deliver 100 million doses each by the end of May — a month sooner than initially planned. But the additional 200 million doses finalized Thursday won't be available until the end of July.
"We're going to be in a position where it's not going to be by the end of the summer," Biden told reporters during a tour of the NIH labs, adding that it's important that people take steps to slow the spread in the interim.
A White House official said that the federal government expects to have received a total of 600 million doses by the end of summer but that it might take longer to get those doses into patients' arms. The White House hasn't given a timeline for vaccinations beyond its goal of 100 million shots in Biden's first 100 days in office.
The Biden administration has been working to ramp up the supply of the vaccines and has increased distribution to the states by 28 percent since Inauguration Day. Biden said his transition team was led to believe that the slow rollout during the Trump administration was a distribution problem, not an issue with the amount of vaccines, saying, "We were under the impression that there was significantly more vaccine."
"When I became president three weeks ago, America had no plan to vaccinate most of the country," Biden said. "It was a big mess. It is going to take time to fix, to be blunt with you."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 33 million first doses had been administered as of Thursday and that more than 10 million people had been fully vaccinated.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Hing Yiu Chung lives in a racially diverse San Francisco neighborhood hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. While vaccines have been difficult to come by, the 69-year-old got one by showing proof she lives where she does.
She had to wait in line for two hours with other seniors, some who were disabled or leaning on canes, for a chance at a couple hundred shots available each day through a local public health clinic in the Bayview neighborhood.
“Fortunately, it wasn’t a cold or rainy day, otherwise it would have been harder," she said in Chinese.
The experience wasn’t ideal, but targeting vulnerable ZIP codes is one way San Francisco and other U.S. cities and counties are trying to ensure they vaccinate people in largely Black, Latino and working-class communities that have borne the brunt of the pandemic. In Dallas, authorities tried to prioritize such ZIP codes, which tended to be communities of color, but backtracked after the state threatened to reduce the city’s vaccine supply.
Nationwide, states are struggling to distribute vaccines equitably even as officials try to define what equity means. They're debating what risk factors gets someone to the head of the line: those in poverty, communities of color, their job or if they have a disability. Others simply want to vaccinate as many people as possible, as soon as possible.
In California, which has prioritized seniors and health care workers, Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced a federal partnership for mass vaccination sites set to open next week in Oakland and east Los Angeles, saying the locations were chosen to target working-class “communities that are often left behind."
“Our focus is on equity, in and around that census tract, not just ZIP code," Newsom said Tuesday. “I don’t want folks coming from all over the Bay Area that are well resourced, that have vehicles, for example, that can get ahead of the line, literally not just figuratively, to take advantage of that."
Newsom also says a new state vaccine distribution system will pay providers to offer shots in vulnerable neighborhoods and communities of color. Insurer Blue Shield of California will run the program and collect demographics on who's getting the shots.
“Unfortunately, because of the history of racism and discrimination in the United States, what we see is that those community resources are not evenly allocated,” said California's surgeon general, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. “So we do have to incentivize and pay for performance if we want to get equivalent outcomes in vulnerable communities."
Some counties aren't waiting for a state program.
In agriculturally rich areas, Fresno County has set aside vaccines for farmworkers, while the public health agency further south in Riverside County has partnered with an immigrant advocacy group to inoculate farmworkers.
In Santa Clara County, near the San Francisco Bay Area, community leaders called on Newsom last week to prioritize doses for ZIP codes with the highest COVID-19 rates, saying vaccines are going to wealthier people with internet access and time on their hands. Latinos make up a quarter of the county but represent more than half its COVID-19 infections.
“Our message to the governor is simple: Prioritize communities that have been hit the hardest by this pandemic. That would be a commitment to equity,” said Jessica Paz-Cedillos, executive director of the School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, which is in one of five Santa Clara County ZIP codes where the infection rate is double the countywide average.
The plaza in San Jose holds vaccinations two days a week for county residents on a first-come, first-served basis, and people must show proof of age or occupation. Seniors line up well before sunrise, carrying blankets and chairs.
Similar scenes played out at a new pop-up vaccination clinic in San Francisco's Mission District, which also has high infection rates. Some 120 doses a day are intended for health workers and seniors by invitation only, but Jon Jacobo, health committee chairman with the Latino Task Force, easily saw 200 people lined up recently, some in their 90s.
He called the lines of desperate seniors “heartbreaking” but said the clinic needs to prioritize people in the most disadvantaged ZIP codes.
“What I don’t want to see is what’s happening in Washington Heights (in Manhattan) or in South Central LA, where you’ve had doctors helping serve the Black community say, ‘This is the most white people I’ve seen in this neighborhood,'" he said.
Aura Sunux, a 43-year-old immigrant from Guatemala who delivers food and health supplies to homebound clients, received her shot Monday at the clinic.
“I feel relieved, believe me," she said. “I have not gotten sick, but I’ve been very close to people who have come up positive.”
California released figures Monday suggesting the lopsided distribution of vaccines to date. Latinos have received 15% of nearly 5 million doses administered — half the rate of white residents, though they make up the bulk of infections and deaths. Black residents have received 2.7% of the doses despite making up 6% of the state's population.
Los Angeles County, the nation's most populous, has delivered at least one dose to just 7% of Black residents 65 and older, while inoculating more than twice that rate of white and Asian seniors.
“Everyone is pretending like this is going to get done in a month or two months," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, founding director of University of California, Riverside’s Center for Social Innovation. “Now is the time to design these systems so those who are most severely impacted by COVID, in terms of cases and deaths, are those who have a fair shot at getting a shot."
Overwhelming demand for vaccines and short supplies can discourage people from seeking the shot, especially in communities where many are suspicious of vaccines.
Health officials said working with community groups is key. Riverside County gave more than 600 shots in the farm-rich Coachella Valley by joining with a local group that signed people up, said Jose Arballo, public health agency spokesman.
“We can do a million clinics,” he said, “but if they don’t want to come because they’re afraid or anxious or afraid their information is going to be used as part of immigration enforcement, they’re not going to come to us.”
———
Taxin reported from Orange County. Associated Press journalists Haven Daley in San Francisco and Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento contributed to this story.

The devastating effects of COVID-19 on every sphere of human endeavour across the globe is not an understatement, specifically, the blow on the global economies. But the President of Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA)’ , Mr. Taiwo Adeniyi, said the pandemic has serious consequences for Nigeria’s economy. Hence the need for more support from government to the Organised Private Sector (OPS).
Reflecting the thoughts and perspectives of the Association on present pressing national and global issues, Adeniyi said Nigeria’s over-reliance on crude oil and lack of support to businesses may make recovery long for Nigeria.
He reasoned that government should go beyond the implementation of the Oronsaye report and deliberately reduce other leakages arising from over-bloated retinue of aides of political officers and expenditure profile with no direct national development impact.
Among other things, he also warned that the uncurbed activities of herdsmen could sound the death knell of government’s effort at achieving food sufficiency in the country.

A Russian expert on Saturday said Wuhan's Huanan seafood market may have made it possible for the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) to spread, but it does not mean the virus originated there.
"There is no evidence that the virus originated there" but hypothetically, there are all conditions for the spread of the virus there," Vladimir Dedkov, a member of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) expert team, was quoted as saying by Sputnik.
The seafood market was linked to an early cluster of COVID-19 cases, but scientists are yet to come to an unequivocal conclusion regarding the role it played in the contagion.
Dedkov also refuted the theory of a virus leakage while visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology along with nine other WHO experts on Wednesday.
"Of course, it was important for our mission to visit this facility, talk to our colleagues and see how everything is organised there," the expert said.
"The laboratory is perfectly equipped.
"It is hard for me to imagine that something could have leaked from there," he added.

Democratic legislators paved the way Wednesday evening for a party-line approval of President Biden’s anticipated $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
The House vote cleared the path for the Senate to pass the relief package with a simple majority, which is likely to take place later in the week and would allow Democrats to write the bill into law and ultimately pass it without the need for Republican votes.
The plan includes a wide range of actions, including $1,400 checks, extended unemployment benefits and an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, as well as funneling $160 billion for vaccines and testing.
Earlier on Wednesday, The White House announced the creation of two mass vaccination centers in California, aiming to speed up the rate of injections in poor communities hit hard by the pandemic.
One will be at California State University in Los Angeles, the other at the Oakland Coliseum, officials said. The sites will be run in partnership with the state but staffed mostly by federal workers. The move is part of the Biden administration’s plan to open mass vaccination sites around the country in its first 100 days and hasten inoculations as new, more transmissible virus variants proliferate.