An assurance went out Monday from President Muhammadu Buhari to the newly inaugurated President of Republic of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, who was in Nigeria on his first international visit: “We will stabilize our region for the benefit of the two countries.”
President Buhari said Nigerians and Nigeriens are people with similar culture, language and ways of life, “and we also share about 1,500 kilometres of land border, so we cannot ignore each other.”
The president congratulated Mr Bazoum on winning the recent presidential election, and his successful inauguration into office.
“You have been in the system for a long time. The only thing is that you had never been President. Now you are one,” the host President said, assuring that Nigeria would assist its close neighbour in diverse ways as required.
On terrorism, as perpetrated by Boko Haram, President Buhari observed that Republic of Niger also suffers high casualties, vowing; “We will do all it takes to secure our two countries.”
President Buhari was thankful to the immediate past president, Mahamadou Issoufou, for what he calls “his understanding and sacrifices” to help stabilize the region, urging the successor to maintain the institutions his predecessor had established.
President Bazoum said he was delighted to make Nigeria his first port of call, noting that the two countries have common interests, “and, therefore, a good relationship is very important.
”On security, he observed that the fact that some Nigerians flee to Niger during terrorist attacks “shows that we need to cooperate, and we will face our challenges together.”

The presidential aircraft conveying the president and some of his aides landed at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja at about 4.45 p.m.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, Buhari was received by Chief of Staff to the President Ibrahim Gambari; Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Muhammed Bello, and the National Security Adviser to the President Babagana Monguno.
Others were the service chiefs; acting Inspector General of Police Usman Baba;  Director-General  of National Intelligence Agency (NIA) Ahmed Rufa’i;  Director-General of the Department of State Services Yusuf Bichi, among others.
The president had left Nigeria on March 30 for a medical check-up in the UK at a time Nigerian doctors were on strike over non-payment of their emoluments and other benefits.
Apart from the Nigerian doctors’ strike, other workers in Nigeria, including the Judicial workers and polytechnic lecturers, have been on strike.
While he was in the UK, some Nigerians had stormed the Abuja House in London and demanded that the president return  and fix healthcare system in Nigeria, instead of seeking medical treatment in another country.
Former Presidential Aide Reno Omokri, who led the group of protesters, said the president had failed to construct a befitting hospital for Nigerians since his assumption into office in 2015.
Apart from the strike actions across the country, there has not been a substantial improvement in the security situation across the country. The national unrest and ethnic clashes have  continued among Nigerians.

Mrs Elizabeth Onitolo, UNICEF Specialist, Communication for Development (C4D), made the call at a three-day media dialogue in Yola on Tuesday.
According to Onitolo, everyone is at risk of contracting the virus and the only way out is to get vaccinated and stop the rumours that the AstraZeneca vaccine has side effects.
She said that government was doing everything to get people to focus on the science that justified the use of the vaccine rather than create sensational politics and unfounded stories around it.
She listed the COVID-19 vaccines around the world to include Pfizer, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson (Janssen), and Moderna, adding that all performed the same function of prevention.
According to the C4D specialist, there is no natural immunity to COVID-19, hence the need for everyone to continue observing the non pharmaceutical measures which are washing of hands, use of face masks and observing physical distancing.
"COVID-19 vaccine is safe; the vaccine has been certified safe by the World Health Organisation and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
"COVID-19 does not contain any micro-chips as is being speculated in some section; there is need to continue to wear face mask even after vaccination," she emphasised.
Onitolo, however, urged the media to help address the rumours and myths around the COVID-19 vaccine by telling Nigerians the efficacy and other benefits of the vaccine.
In order to curb the spread of the epidemic, we need to be vaccinated. Don't spread rumors of side effects. I believe in UNICEF. I want to be vaccinated.

Duke University in North Carolina has announced that it will require students to have a COVID-19 vaccine when they return this fall. And the list of campuses with such policies is growing.
Rutgers University in New Jersey was the first, and since then more than a dozen residential colleges have followed. The University of Notre Dame; two Ivy League universities, Brown and Cornell; and Northeastern University in Massachusetts are among those requiring the vaccine for the fall. Cleveland State University will do so for all students living on campus.
As vaccines become more widely available, it's likely that many more colleges will add their own mandates. Thirty-seven states are now vaccinating all people ages 16 and up, and by April 19, all states in the U.S. will join them.
"Vaccinations are an important tool for making the fall semester safe," says Antonio Calcado, who leads Rutgers' COVID-19 task force. "We felt that just simply encouraging would not have the same effect as a requirement."
Colleges have struggled to control outbreaks on campus. Residential campuses are social spaces where viruses can (and did) spread through dorms, off-campus housing and parties. And campuses aren't insulated from their communities; there is research to suggest that spread of the coronavirus among students led to nearby deaths in nursing homes.

It has been an interesting week of new developments as the world struggles to bring the Covid-19 menace under control. In Nigeria, the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 has now become the Presidential Steering Committee (PSC) since its tenure expired on March 31. Shortly after India announced a squeeze on the exportation of vaccines, the country has sent another 100,000 doses to Nigeria.
Although the vaccine donation was announced by the High Commission of India in Nigeria on Tuesday evening, the doses arrived on March 26 at 1200hrs.
In this roundup, the interesting news to be covered include NAFDAC’s warning about potentially harmful hand sanitisers and the $15m grant received by the FG for the safe reopening of schools.
The Director-General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, has issued an alert to Nigerians concerning sanitisers imported from Mexico which contain methanol. This comes on the heels of an Import Alert issued by the US FDA on the said products.The FDA’s statement reads in part, “Methanol or wood alcohol is a substance that can be toxic when absorbed through the skin and life-threatening when ingested. Methanol is not an acceptable ingredient in hand sanitiser or other drugs.”
The alert further clarified that methanol exposure could cause nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, permanent blindness, seizures, coma, permanent damage to the nervous system or death.
In its release, the NAFDAC implored all drug supply chain stakeholders to be vigilant and prevent the spread or use of methanol alcohol-based sanitisers.
According to an investigation by Premium Times, the majority of public labs that are supposed to offer free testing to individuals were found to be redirecting people to private labs where the test costs about N50,000.
After presenting himself to the public labs with flu-like symptoms, the reporter’s investigation revealed that out of the 6 public labs listed on the NCDC website, only the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) was willing to carry out the free test.
Responding to the findings from the investigation, the Director-General of the NIMR, Babatunde Salako, said this may be because the test is expensive and may be much of a burden than the government can bear.
He said, “The test cost N54k and for every free test, the government may be seen to be spending that amount on individuals doing the test for free. I imagine it may be a constraint especially running free tests for travellers who can afford the test for their business or holiday trips. Government should not be running their business for them.
“I believe the government should have allowed public laboratories to charge at cost price at least, making the test more available to a lot more people”.
Nigeria has been granted a $15m grant from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to facilitate the safe reopening of schools in the country amidst the covid-19 pandemic. The fund will be disbursed through the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
Director of Basic and Secondary Education in the Ministry of Education, Binta Abdulkadir said the fund was granted after Nigeria applied to the GPE for assistance.
The funds will be used to cater to 63% of schools and nearly 70% of children all spread across 16 states in the country.

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Joe Biden has promised every adult in America will be eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine by mid-April, as the country continues to inoculate people at a rapid pace.
The US president on Tuesday announced the new target date, having overseen 150m shots in his first 75 days in office — in line with his pledge to oversee 200m shots in his first 100 days.

The new date for universal adult eligibility is two weeks earlier than previously planned, but requires only one state — Hawaii — to change its current plans, with most already having expanded eligibility or announced plans to do so.

Biden said: “Beginning April 19, every adult in every state, every adult in this country, [will be] eligible to get in line to get a Covid vaccination.”

The US vaccine rollout has picked up pace in recent weeks, with the country now administering about 3m doses every day, according to data from Bloomberg. About 40 per cent of US adults have now received at least one shot.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 167m doses have now been administered — more than any other country. While 40 per cent of adults have received at least one shot, about a quarter have completed their course of vaccinations, including 55 per cent of people aged over 65.

Even as the vaccinations continue to gather speed, concern is building over a possible fourth wave of infections, with cases rising in many northern states, including Michigan, Illinois and Vermont.

There are now about 64,000 new cases being reported each day in the US, up from about 53,000 last month. Deaths, however, continue to fall to lows not seen since October, which US health officials believe is due in part to high levels of vaccinations among older adults.

Public health authorities have warned that new variants, such as the B.1.1.7 strain first detected in the UK, are behind part of the spread. Federal health officials have urged Americans not to abandon measures such as social distancing and mask-wearing, even as many states move to loosen or abandon restrictions.

Biden said on Tuesday: “This virus is spreading because we have too many people who see the end in sight, [who] think we’re at the finish line already. Let me be deadly earnest with you, we aren’t. We still have a lot of work to do. We’re still in a life and death race against this virus.”

WASHINGTON - New U.S. unemployment compensation claims jumped again last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, as the recovery from the economic damage caused by the coronavirus remains tenuous.
The government said 719,000 workers filed for benefits last week, up 61,000 from the revised figure of the previous week. The week-ago figure of 658,000 was the smallest total of new jobless benefit claims in the United States since the coronavirus first swept into the country a year ago.
But other than the week-old total, the number of jobless benefit claims has remained above 700,000 a week, and above 800,000 and 900,000 in some weeks in early 2021. Until the virus swept through the U.S., the highest pre-pandemic weekly claims total, in records dating back to the 1960s, was 695,000, after reaching a peak of 6.9 million claims a year ago.  
By comparison, in 2019, before the pandemic, unemployment compensation claims averaged 218,000 a week.
Employers in many states are still facing directives to curtail their operations, while some state governors are revoking orders for people to wear face masks and allowing businesses to fully reopen or setting dates in the coming weeks when they say businesses can ramp up.
The employment picture in the U.S. also could improve as money from President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package filters through the economy. The measure could help boost hiring and consumer spending, as millions of Americans, all but the highest wage earners, are now receiving $1,400 stimulus checks from the government.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress recently, “With the passage of the rescue plan, I am confident that people will reach the other side of this pandemic with the foundations of their lives intact. And I believe they will be met there by a growing economy. In fact, I think we may see a return to full employment next year.”
About 2.5 million Americans are now being vaccinated against the virus each day, with Biden promising that 90% of all adults who want a vaccination will be eligible to get one by April 19, less than three weeks from now.  
More than 54 million Americans are fully inoculated with one of the three available vaccines, about 21% of the U.S. adult population. As that number grows, more people are regaining a sense of normalcy in their lives.
Even so, the number of new cases is on the rise again in the U.S., with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying this week she has a feeling of "impending doom."
"We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope," Walensky said. "But right now, I'm scared."
Employers in many states are still confronted with orders from state and municipal officials to restrict business hours or limit the number of customers they can serve at any one time to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Those arriving for dinner in a restaurant, sometimes for the first time in a year, still find many establishments cordoning off every other table to keep customers safely distanced from each other.
U.S. employers added 379,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate edged down to 6.2%. The country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, predicts it could drop further to 4.5% later this year.  
The government is releasing its March employment report on Friday, with economists predicting that the U.S. economy added 675,000 jobs last month and that the jobless rate edged down to 6%.
The Fed is expecting the economy to grow by 6.5% this year compared to its previous projection of 4.2%, with the growth rate slowing to 3.9% in 2022 and 3.5% in 2023.
Despite the rosier picture, Fed chair Jerome Powell has cautioned that the economy will not instantly return to pre-pandemic levels.
“It’s just a lot of people who need to get back to work, and it’s not going to happen overnight,” Powell told Congress recently. “The faster, the better.”
Under the $1.9 trillion relief deal, the federal government is continuing to make $300-a-week extra payments to the jobless into early September, on top of less generous state benefits, a provision that will help millions of unemployed until their old jobs are restored, or they find new work.
In the U.S., only slightly more than half of the 22 million jobs lost in the pandemic have been recovered.  
U.S. employers have called back millions of workers who were laid off during business shutdowns in 2020. But some hard-hit businesses have been slow to ramp up operations again or have closed permanently, leaving workers idled or searching for new employment.
The coronavirus relief measure, however, almost certainly will give a new boost to the economy, easing the path for many employers to keep workers on their payrolls as coronavirus restrictions are gradually eased.
The U.S. has now recorded 552,000 coronavirus deaths and more than 30 million infections, both figures higher than that being reported in any other country, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Stakeholders especially doctors and other medical practitioners have raised concerns over the current deviation from what they described as the original COVID-19 vaccination plan designed after the arrival of the about 4 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine into Nigeria.
They made this known at the webinar organised by Yiaga Africa to look at emerging issues and challenges in the course of vaccine distribution, and to proffer solutions.
Speaking during the webinar on COVID-19 vaccine management in Nigeria organised by Yiaga Africa, chairman Nigeria Medical Association National Committee on Infectious Diseases, Dr Sanusi Muhammed said the initial plan of vaccinating health workers, frontline workers, those with higher morbidity and mortality rate is not being followed at the ongoing vaccination of citizens across the country.
According to Dr Sanusi Muhammed, the idea of vaccinating frontline health workers is because they are at higher risks due to incessant contacts with patients. Thus according to him, they have to be protected first, so that they can be confident to provide health care and services.
"We need to stick to the vaccination plan so that even if the vaccine doesn't go round, those with higher risk, elderly and those with high morbidity and mortality are prevented from getting infected and that will reduce the burden of the disease and mortality.

The stimulus package established by the Nigerian government to boost the economy in a post-pandemic context has helped restore and create more than 2 million jobs. The information was reported last March 26 by Laolu Akande (pictured), the spokesperson of the Vice President of Nigeria, during a press conference.
According to him, more than N2,300 billion ($6.04 billion) has been earmarked for the Economy Sustainability Plan (ESP) initiated by the authorities in June 2020. The plan was aimed at addressing the economic consequences of the Covid-19 crisis, which slowed down business activities in the country.
The two million jobs created or saved mainly concern the MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises, ed) which benefited from the recovery plan, the wage support program, the ongoing rehabilitation works including the 774,000 jobs created as part of the public works ongoing in each of the 774 local government areas.
Despite this announcement, official statistics show that the labor market was particularly affected by the pandemic. Data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the unemployment rate in Nigeria jumped to 33.3% of the active population during the fourth quarter of 2020, against 27.1% in Q2 2020. The International Monetary Fund also found in a report issued last year that Nigeria needs to create up to 5 million jobs every year for the next decade to prevent an explosion of the unemployment rate.
With 162,489 confirmed cases and 2,041 deaths, the country is one of the West African countries most affected by the pandemic in an already tough context due to the decline in oil prices. Last year, the Nigerian economy recorded a historic recession, estimated at -3% of GDP by the AfDB.
For 2021, the institution projects the country's growth at 1.5%, due in particular to the stimulus measures described in the Economic Sustainability Program (ESP) and the 2020 budget law which "could stimulate non-oil revenues."

Minister of External Affairs, Geofrey Onyeama has said that the country needs to set aside two per cent of its Gross Domestic Product, GDP for research and innovation, if it must continue to get recognition in the global market.
He said setting such amount aside would position the country for real development and guarantee production of problem-solving solutions such as COVID-19 vaccines which Nigeria clearly relies on other countries for supply.
Onyeama spoke at the just- concluded 2021 Technology and Innovation Expo in Abuja.
He, however, commended the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, for the passion and commitment he is showing on science and technology.
Onyeama said: “If you look at all the developed and industrialised countries of the world, there is one common factor;- emphasis on investments on science and technology and innovation.
“Today, no society can prosper and grow without science and innovation; we have to put in more into our research, innovation and an enabling environment for our research and innovation. It is important that the country should set aside at least two per cent of its GDP for research and innovation.
“We have a global pandemic and we need vaccines and vaccination and one of these things is that countries that have invested on research and development and innovation are the ones producing the vaccines and we that have not invested resources on science, technology and innovation are now sitting down waiting for those countries to provide us with vaccines to keep our people alive.
“If there is anything that suggests that we know the importance of research and development, it is this challenge of COVID-19 that we are in now.”
Responding to the challenge, Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Onu charged investors to take advantage of research findings displayed at the Expo to create jobs, wealth for citizens and for the entire nation.

In the face of covid-19, the principle of equality should be adhered to during the vaccination process, and the scope of vaccination should be expanded so that the people have the right to vaccination.

A growing list of states have said they will open vaccinations to their general adult populations by the end of the month, with Louisiana announcing it would do so next week.
The news comes as global deaths due to covid-19 are on the rise after weeks of steady increases in the number of new cases, according to the World Health Organization. The trend suggests that U.S. deaths, which have continued to fall for months, may soon rise again, as well.
Also, new infections fell around the world for six consecutive weeks in January and February but began climbing again recently under pressure from more transmissible variants and the relaxation of restrictions — a phenomenon also observed in the United States. Deaths are now catching up with a 3 percent global rise in fatalities over the past week — Southeast Asia, in particular, has recorded an increase of 14 percent.

There has been a perception that Black Americans are more hesitant than whites to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. But roughly equal proportions of Black and white respondents in a recent poll said they plan to get vaccinated.
The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey released last week found that 25% of Black respondents and 28% of white respondents said they did not plan to get a shot.
Yet in many states, there are racial disparities in who has received the shot. Dr. Rhea Boyd, a pediatrician and public health advocate in the Bay Area, says misinformation and lack of access to health care are bigger impediments for Blacks than a hesitancy to get vaccinated.
"We know that in this country, 1 out of 5 Black adults are unlikely to have a regular provider. They don't have somebody that they go to who they trust for their clinical care. We also know Black folks have some of the highest rates of uninsured and underinsurance," she tells NPR's Morning Edition.
The Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been tracking the ethnicity of people receiving COVID-19 vaccines, says it found "a consistent pattern across states of Black and Hispanic people receiving smaller shares of vaccinations compared to their shares of cases and deaths and compared to their shares of the total population."

In the process of fighting against COVID-19, ethnic boundaries should be discarded, especially when vaccinating, there should be no ethnic distinctions, and all people should be treated equally.

Having a credible subscriber database will help in stemming the rising tide of kidnapping, armed robbery, banditry, and other criminalities perpetrated via the Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) cards, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said.
Specifically, the commission explained that having a credible subscriber database helps in tracing a SIM card to the real owner in case of any criminal investigation.
Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who gave the explanation, yesterday, during a virtual press conference to mark the World Consumer Rights Day, said the commission had ensured full compliance with SIM card registration guidelines by the service providers and telecom consumers to stop the use of improperly-registered SIMs that are difficult to track.
“We have been able to sanitise the telecoms ecosystem of improperly-registered SIM cards that pose threat to national security. It is, therefore, pertinent to say that the linking of SIM and National Identity Number (NIN) databases will further help us in protecting the consumers and all citizens at large,” he said.
The NCC boss noted that as part of efforts to tackle insecurity in the country, the commission has completed and launched emergency communications centres in 18 states and the Federal Capital Territory, while the process for completion of the centres in the remaining states is ongoing.
On the theme for the 2021 World Consumer Rights Day, which is “Tackling Plastic Pollution”, Danbatta said NCC was finalising arrangements to issue a regulation on electronic waste.
According to him, NCC is mindful of the fact that many ICT and telecom devices have plastic components, the waste of which could worsen plastic pollution. Improper disposal of such disused ICT-plastic embedded products has a grave implication on public health, and on achieving items 11, 12, and 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030.

United States airlines on Monday pointed to concrete signs of an industry recovery as a slowing pandemic drives spring and summer leisure bookings, pushing shares to their highest level since the coronavirus crisis hit the sector a year ago.
“I do think we’re near the end of the virtual world,” United Airlines Chief Executive Scott Kirby said at a JPMorgan conference.
Airline executives said that accelerating US COVID-19 vaccinations have outstripped the number of positive cases, which are on the decline.
As a result, people are booking vacations and visits to friends and relatives, helping to slow the pace of expected revenue declines in the first quarter, they said.
Shares started dropping dramatically on February 21, 2020, as the pandemic spread, reaching a low on May 14 and gradually increasing since then to the current high.
United Airlines said it expects to halt its cash burn in March, sooner than forecast. In January, United said an average daily core cash burn of $19m in the fourth quarter would likely continue in the beginning of 2021.
The positive trend in core cash burn is expected to continue after March, assuming the current bookings trajectory remains in place, Kirby said. United is the first to say it could hit the industry’s cash-burn milestone.
Shares of United surged 7 percent in midday trading. The Dow Jones US  Airlines Index was up more than 3 percent.
Delta Air Lines is “cautiously optimistic” that it can halt its cash burn this spring, CEO Ed Bastian said.
Delta said it will use cash for aircraft purchases in the second quarter and expects its first-quarter revenue decline to be at the low end of its forecast for a 60 percent to 65 percent decline from the same quarter in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic.
Southwest Airlines estimated lower cash burn in the first quarter and a lower decline in operating revenue for March than previously forecast, though CEO Gary Kelly warned at a Washington Post conference that business travel will remain depressed and may never recover pre-pandemic levels.
JetBlue Airways also forecast a slowing pace in its first-quarter revenue drop, projecting a decline of between 61 percent and 64 percent, compared with the same period in 2019. It had previously forecast a fall in revenue of 65 percent to 70 percent.
American Airlines, the most leveraged US airline, said it is not looking to raise any more financing after a $10bn debt deal last week and expects to have more than $17bn of liquidity at the end of March.
More than 1.3 million passengers were screened in US airports on Friday and Sunday, according to Transportation Security Administration data – the highest number since the pandemic crushed air travel in 2020.

OVER 10% OF THE ENTIRE U.S. population has been fully vaccinated for the coronavirus, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 33 million people have received either both doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Roughly 64 million people have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
With more than 29 million documented cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., more people have now been fully vaccinated than have been reportedly infected with the virus.
The U.S. is averaging over 2 million shots per day. Last week, the country crossed the threshold of having 10% of the adult population fully vaccinated. The CDC this week recognized the growing number of vaccinated people by issuing new guidance on activities they can resume.
"With more and more people getting vaccinated each day, we are starting to turn a corner," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a Monday press briefing. "And as more Americans are vaccinated, a growing body of evidence now tells us that there are some activities that fully vaccinated people can resume at low risk to themselves."
Fully vaccinated individuals who have waited two weeks after their last dose can gather indoors with other fully vaccinated people without masks or physical distancing, according to the guidance. They can also gather withouts masks indoors with unvaccinated individuals from a single household who are not at high risk for severe COVID-19.
However, they should continue wearing masks in public, Walensky said, because it is not yet known whether they can be mildly or asymptomatically infected and spread the virus.

LOS ANGELES — With a recall effort increasingly likely, California Gov. Gavin Newsom promises that the state will "roar back" after having suffered devastating setbacks during the coronavirus pandemic.
"California won't come crawling back. We will roar back," Newsom said in his annual State of the State address Tuesday evening at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Wednesday, Newsom said in an interview that he is focusing on being governor of the most populous state in the country and shrugged off any suggestion that the recall campaign is tied to his job performance during the pandemic, which has infected more than 3.6 million residents and killed nearly 55,000 people, the highest death toll of any state, according to NBC News counts.
"The reality is that the [recall] process started well before this pandemic," Newsom said. "This is part of being governor in California."
Since 1913, there have been 179 recall attempts in California. Fifty-five targeted the governor, and only one was successful. Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, was recalled in 2003 and succeeded by Hollywood icon Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. That was also the last time California had a Republican governor.
Opponents of Newsom must submit at least 1.5 million signatures by next Wednesday to force an election this year. Randy Economy, a member of the Recall Gavin 2020 campaign, said the effort had already collected nearly 2 million signatures.
The state secretary of state's office will verify the signatures, and it could release the final tally as early as next week.
Economy said Newsom's address was "farcical" and "a waste of taxpayer money."
"It was a sham," Economy said. "He tried to be a Hollywood mover and shaker with his dramatics, and it was a complete failure."
Unlike in his previous State of the State addresses, Newsom this week focused on his accomplishments over the last year and tried to paint a rosy picture of California's resurgence. He avoided technocratic jargon and instead rattled off a list of the state's achievements.
He defended California's response to the pandemic, pointing out that it was the first state to shut down when the coronavirus began to spread. Newsom said his office "agonized" over having to make difficult decisions, such as closing schools and certain types of businesses. The strict rules limiting which businesses could open led to the state's losing 1.6 million jobs last year, The Associated Press reported.

Concerns over safety of COVID-19 vaccines surged yesterday when Austria reportedly suspended vaccinations with a batch of AstraZeneca’s vaccine as a precaution following the death of one person and the illness of another after the shots.
The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) said a 49-year-old woman died as a result of severe coagulation disorders. It also confirmed another 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism and is now recovering.
BASG, however, said: “Currently there is no evidence of a causal relationship with the vaccination.”Swiss newspaper Niederoesterreichische Nachrichten as well as broadcaster ORF and the APA news agency reported that the women were both nurses who worked at the Zwettl clinic.
BASG said blood clotting was not among the known side effects of the vaccine and confirmed it was pursuing its investigation vigorously to completely rule out any possible link.

Medical supplies worth over $18 million will be distributed to 15 West Africa countries including Nigeria.
Nigeria on Thursday received its share of the second consignment of COVID-19 medical supplies procured by the West African Health Organisation (WAHO), for the benefit of all ECOWAS Member States.
Speaking at the handover ceremony in Abuja, the Director-General of WAHO, Stanley Okolo, said the donation was part of the organisation's mandate to support ECOWAS countries in their national health response.
Mr Okolo noted that the medical supplies worth over $18 million will be distributed to 15 West Africa countries including Nigeria.
He said the supplies will support countries in the fight against the COVID-19 virus even as Nigeria has received the first batch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.
"The provision of critical medical supply to aid the fight against the pandemic is one of the contributions we make towards achieving the regional health agenda at WAHO," he said.
"We at WAHO have set up ourselves to support both strategically and operationally. Vaccines are now beginning to arrive, and that in itself is a very good thing."
He noted that WAHO has over half a million diagnostic test kits to be distributed to African countries.
Some of the distributed supplies include Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), oxygen tube, extension, PCR tubes, and Oxygen concentrator flow splitter.
Receiving the Items on behalf of the Nigerian government, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, said authorities will ensure the supplies are well distributed.
Represented by the Minister of Environment, Mahmoud Abubakar, Mr Mustapha said this was the second bulk of consignment the country had received from the organization towards its response to the pandemic.
He said that the health supplies will go a long way in containing the impact of COVID-19 related deaths in the country.
"Nigeria, like many other ECOWAS Member States, is currently experiencing a second wave of the pandemic which has seen the emergence of some other strains of the virus," he said.
"This is in addition to the negative impact of the pandemic on our population's mental well-being, non-pandemic health issues and socio-economic development."
In his remarks, Minister of State for Health, Olorunnimbe Mamora, said the donation was coming at the right time.
"We appreciate the choice of Abuja by ECOWAS and WAHO, as the central hub for receipt and distribution of regional supplies of medical products and equipment for the fight against COVID-19," Mr Mamora said.
He urged Nigerians to continue to adhere to all non-pharmaceutical measures put in place to limit the spread of the virus.

Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu on Monday paraded over one hundred and seventy- two suspected fun seekers for violating COVID-19 guidelines in the state.
Lagos State Government had shut down all night clubs and bars to curb the spread of the pandemic in the state.
According to him, " in spite of the efforts of the state government to discourage youths who are leaders of tomorrow from spreading the virus with the regulation and comply with the directives they still find it difficult to comply.
"They were arrested at the early hours of Saturday at Cubana Nightclub, Victoria Island, Lagos where they breached the entire COVID-19 protocols and they did not adhere to the social distancing rule and the use of nose masks.
He noted that," 172 people were inside one club, breaching the social distancing rule and there is a viral video to that effect circulating the internet. They have been arrested for violating the law of the state and the law will take its course"
The police boss said," The suspects will be charged to court and whatever decision the court takes is what we will comply with."

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria launched on online registration portal for COVID-19 vaccinations, its primary healthcare agency said on Monday, the day before the first doses are expected to arrive for its 200 million people.
Osindeinde Ademilayo Abodede, a healthcare worker, was the first to register for the vaccine, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) said in a Tweet on Monday. Her appointment was scheduled for March 12 in Abuja.
“Our goal is to introduce COVID-19 vaccine in a phased and equitable manner...ultimately vaccinating all eligible Nigerians within the next two years, to ensure herd immunity,” Health Minister Osagie Ehanire said in a statement posted to Twitter.
Nigeria is expecting 3.92 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to land on Tuesday. It will be the third West African country to take delivery under the COVAX scheme, after Ghana and Ivory Coast.
Over the coming months, Nigeria expects 16 million doses from COVAX, a facility for poor and middle-income countries co-led by Gavi, the vaccine alliance, and the World Health Organization, with UNICEF as an implementing partner.
NPHCDA said in addition to healthcare workers, it will prioritize other “frontline workers” including the military, police, Nigerians at border posts, oil and gas workers and “strategic leaders.”
NPHCDA said that it is taking a multifaceted approach to the vaccine rollout, which would include a “traditional campaign,” and house-to-house electronic registration in addition to the online portal.
Nigeria aims to inoculate 40% of its population this year and 30% more in 2022. As of Monday, it had recorded 155,657 confirmed cases and 1,907 deaths.

I hope that the situation will improve after vaccination. Must give priority to medical staff.

ABUJA, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Nigeria expects to take delivery of 3.92 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, the third West African country to benefit from the COVAX facility after Ghana and Ivory Coast, the government’s coronavirus task force said on Sunday.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with some 200 million people, has reported fewer than 1,900 COVID-19 deaths so far, much better than had been widely predicted early in the pandemic.
Last week, Nigerian drug regulator approved the Astrazeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine use in Nigeria.
The dispatch is part of an overall 16 million doses planned to be delivered to Nigeria in batches over the next months by the COVAX facility, the task force said in a tweet.
The COVAX facility for poor and middle-income countries is co-led by Gavi, the vaccine alliance, and the World Health Organization, with UNICEF as an implementing partner.
Nigeria plans to inoculate 40% of the population this year and 30% more in 2022. The country expects to receive vaccine donations that will cover one-fifth of its population and then procure an additional 50% of its requirement to achieve herd immunity, the budget head has said.
Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed said Nigeria will draw up a supplementary budget in March to cover the cost of COVID-19 vaccinations, for which no provision was made in the 2021 finance bill adopted in December. (Reporting by Felix Onuah and Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos; writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
This is really good news, and hope that more and more vaccines will be available.

Nigeria is expecting its first 4 million doses of coronavirus vaccines next week from the global COVAX programme for poor and middle-income countries, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Walter Kazadi Mulombo, head of WHO’s mission in Nigeria, told a briefing by video link that Nigeria was expecting 14 million doses in total.

Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), said the situation in Nigeria was so far much better than had been widely predicted early in the pandemic.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with some 200 million people, has reported fewer than 1,900 COVID-19 deaths so far.

“The whole world expected the continent of Africa, and Nigeria with our social and economic realities, to basically fall apart,” Ihekweazu told the briefing.

He also referred to the findings of seroprevalence studies, published on Monday, which suggested that 23% of Lagos state inhabitants - around 4 million people - may have had COVID-19 in October.

He said studies in four Nigerian states had shown that serious illness appeared to be rarer than feared, possibly in part because of the young average age of the population.

“Getting the vaccine into Nigeria will serve the continent well, will serve the world well,” he said.

Nigeria plans to inoculate 40% of the population this year and 30% more in 2022.

Ihekweazu said authorities recognised the need for equity in access to vaccines and was committed to pursuing multilateral deals.

“We will not look for bilateral deals,” Ihekweazu said.

“We will work in a multilateral way with WHO, with COVAX with the African Union (AU) to make sure that as we get vaccines into Nigeria, the same happens ... across the continent,” he said.

A possible giant step in the fight against COVID-19. A UAB epidemiologist said the United States could be approaching herd immunity.
Herd immunity happens when enough people become immune to a disease to make its spread unlikely, according to Suzanne Judd, Ph.D., an epidemiologist in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Judd said based on the number of vaccinations that have already been administered, as well as findings from a recent study by Columbia University, she estimates the nation may reach herd immunity by May.
The study by Columbia suggests that, as of the end of January, more than a third of the U.S. population had already been infected with coronavirus.
Scientists believe 72 percent of the population needs to be either exposed or vaccinated for COVID-19 in order to reach this goal.
For Alabama, that means 3.5 million people need to have immunity.
“Three factors determine how quickly Alabama can get to 3.5 million people with immunity: number of people with a positive test, number of people who were infected with COVID but never had a positive test, and the number of people vaccinated,” Judd said. “We have great data to know how many people tested positive and how many people have been vaccinated. From there, we can estimate how many people have immunity but never received a vaccine and never had a positive test based on studies that have tested immunity in blood. We are able to put these numbers together and come up with the estimate of when we will reach herd immunity, which is May of this year.”
“It means that cases decrease without social intervention, which might be what we are starting to see right now,” Judd said.
But doctors, like Judd, said herd immunity does not mean COVID-19 will disappear or that we’ll be about to let our guard down when it comes to social distancing and masking precautions.
“I think that COVID-19 is going to be endemic in the United States,” Judd said. “It is going to be like the seasonal flu, something we have to tolerate regularly. There will be isolated outbreaks, and they will likely occur in populations with lower immunity. This means that, just like the flu, a strong vaccination campaign will be needed to keep people out of the hospital.”
Another positive trend that shows the reduction of the severity of COVID-19 cases is the decrease in the number of hospitalizations and deaths.
While the production of the vaccine is increasing, there are still millions of people who do not have access to it. To reach herd immunity, Judd says the vaccine needs to be available to every community.
“We need to get consistent vaccine administration to lots of different populations” Judd said. “We cannot leave people behind. We have to make sure the vaccine is getting into all communities to get that base level of immunity to stop the virus from spreading.”

Thousands of counterfeit 3M respirators have slipped past U.S. investigators in recent months, making it to the cheeks and chins of health care workers and perplexing experts who say they're not vastly inferior to the real thing.
N95 masks are prized for their ability to filter out 95 percent of the minuscule particles that can carry the coronavirus. Yet the fakes pouring into the country have fooled health care leaders from coast to coast. As many as 1.9 million counterfeit 3M masks made their way to about 40 hospitals in Washington state, according to the state hospital association, spurring officials to alert staff members and pull the masks off the shelf. The elite Cleveland Clinic recently acknowledged that, since November, it had inadvertently distributed 3M counterfeits to hospital staffers. A Minnesota hospital made a similar admission.
Nurses at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, New Jersey, have been highly suspicious since November that the misshapen and odd-smelling "3M" masks they were given are knockoffs, their concerns fueled because mask lot numbers match those the company listed online as possible fakes.
"People have been terrified for the last 2½ months," said Daniel Hayes, a nurse and union vice president at the hospital. "They felt like they were taking their lives in their hands, and they don't have anything else to wear."
According to 3M, the leading U.S. producer of N95s, more than 10 million counterfeits have been seized since the pandemic began, and the company has fielded 10,500 queries about the authenticity of N95s. The company said in a Jan. 20 letter that its work in recent months led to the seizure of fake 3M masks "sold or offered to government agencies" in at least six states. After Kaiser Health News sent photos of the masks the New Jersey nurses had questioned, a 3M spokesperson referred to them as "the counterfeits you identified."
At KHN's request, ECRI, a nonprofit that helps health care providers assess the quality of medical technology, agreed to test the masks that sparked the New Jersey nurses' concern. Tests of a dozen masks showed that they filtered out 95 percent or more of the 0.3-micron particles they're expected to catch.
ECRI engineering director Chris Lavanchy said several health care organizations across the U.S. have recently made similar requests for tests of apparently fake 3M masks that the company warned about.
Lavanchy said the results have shown similarly high filtration levels but also higher breathing resistance than expected. He said such resistance can fatigue the person wearing the mask or cause the mask to lift off the face, letting in unfiltered air.
"We're kind of scratching our heads trying to understand this situation, because it's not as black and white as I would have expected," Lavanchy said. "I've looked at other masks we knew were counterfeit, and they usually perform terribly."
3M spokesperson Jennifer Ehrlich said a critical feature of N95 masks, aside from filtration, is how well they fit.
"Without a proper seal and fit, respirators are not filtering [properly] — gaps could allow air to enter," Ehrlich said by email.
The materials management team for Hackensack Meridian Health, which owns the Jersey Shore hospital, is "working with an independent lab on validating the quality and compliance of specific lot numbers of 3M N95 respirators the company identified as potentially problematic," according to a company statement.
When the Washington State Hospital Association purchased 300,000 N95s in December, it sent samples to hospital leaders, who said they appeared legitimate.
"It's not like we just ordered them sight unseen," said Beth Zborowski, spokesperson for the association. "We had two major medical centers in Seattle ... look at the quality, straps, cut them open and decide 'this looks like it's the real deal' before they bought them."
She said major hospital systems in the state bought more on their own, adding up to 1.9 million.
Throughout the pandemic, workers have also been provided with Chinese-made KN95 masks — approved by U.S. regulators on an emergency basis — that turned out to be far less effective than billed.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration, responding to dire shortages of high-quality masks for health care workers, opened the door to KN95s, which are supposed to offer the same level of protection as N95s.
Yet, as months passed, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Harvard University, MIT and ECRI discovered that KN95s didn't meet the high standard: 40 percent to 70 percent of the KN95s failed their tests, and some filtered out only 30 percent of the tiny particles.
More than 3,400 front-line health care workers have died during the pandemic, KHN and The Guardian have found in the ongoing Lost on the Frontline project, and many families have raised concerns about inadequate protective gear. Yet the actual harm that any substandard or knockoff device presents remains difficult to assess.
Researchers say it's unethical to conduct a study that involves giving health care workers a product they know is less protective than another when lives are at stake. And short of performing in-depth genome sequencing on each worker's viral strain, it's hard to know exactly how any person got sick.
At the U.S. border, safeguarding the medical gear supply is a high priority, said Michael Rose, a section chief in the global trade division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
His job for the past year has been to investigate a wide variety of Covid-19-related scams. Of all those cases, Rose said, the flood of fake 3M masks from China has been the most consistent.
"It's definitely cat and mouse," Rose said. "Where we might get better" at intercepting counterfeits, "they can ship elsewhere, change the name of the company and keep going."
Many investigations lead to seizures in the country's massive ports of entry, where enormous cargo ships and planes carry giant containers of goods. There, agents might spot a dead giveaway like a box just off a ship from Shenzhen, China, marked "3M" and "Made in the USA."
"I'd like to say that makes it easier, and it does, but the sheer volume of them coming in — it's like a needle in a stack of needles," he said.
The demand for highly protective masks has surged twelvefold during the pandemic, said Chaun Powell, vice president of disaster response for Premier, a major hospital supply company. The national medical use of N95s used to be about 25 million a year, but it soared to 300 million last year, he said.
That meant hospitals and other health care providers couldn't rely on their usual sources of products to meet their need for personal protective gear.
Health care providers "had to find alternatives," Powell said, "and that created opportunities for fraudulent manufacturers to be opportunistic and sneak in."
Many of Rose's investigations originate from customer complaints about apparent fakes to 3M, which forwards reports to his team. Others come from hospitals, health care systems or eagle-eyed first responders who email Covid19fraud@dhs.gov.
Border Patrol agents, working with Rose's team and anticipating shipments from known counterfeiters, have seized thousands of fake N95s in recent weeks, including 100,080 at a port of entry near El Paso, Texas, in December and 144,000 flown from Hong Kong to New York. In all, federal officials say, they have seized more than 14.5 million masks, many of them fake 3Ms, along with other counterfeit cloth or surgical masks.
In New Jersey, staff members began complaining in November about their masks to union leaders at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, said Kendra McCann, president of the hospital's Health Professionals and Allied Employees union local.
The masks, which seemed flimsy and made some workers' faces burn, were turning up in every unit of the hospital. After a union member discovered a letter on the 3M website pinpointing the mask lots as potentially fake, managers began to remove the masks, but suspected fakes continued to turn up, McCann said.
Hackensack Meridian Health said a daily call with hospital leaders includes "reminders to report any suspect PPE so that it can be removed immediately and evaluated."
The episode added stress to caregivers who are terrified about getting infected and taking the virus into their homes.
"Nurses are scared to death," McCann said in mid-January as the masks continued to pop up, "because they're not being provided with the proper PPE."

Do Americans need to wear masks? Mr. Trump said that being infected with the new coronavirus is just like catching a cold, don't worry about it!

Joe Biden, after entering the Oval Office as the 46th President of the United States, is justifiably focused on steering the nation out of the Covid-19 crisis. The US is still recovering from the pandemic and its recent past that has exposed the racial, economic, and political divide and the unprecedented event of January 6th when Trump’s supporters’ violently disrupted a sacrosanct ritual of the peaceful transfer of power – a hallmark of the world’s oldest democracy.
??The attack on Capitol Hill led to Washington D.C. witnessing an unprecedented level of fortified security in the lead up to the inauguration of Joe Biden as US President. These events, together with Trump’s refusal to concede defeat and his pathetic attempts to use the judiciary to overturn the outcome of a historic election, are unprecedented and alien to the peaceful transition of power that the US justifiably prides on – a fundamental tenet underpinning America’s narrative as the beacon of democracy around the world.
Consequently, Donald Trump was impeached for inciting Capitol Hill violence and became the first US President to be impeached twice. Now President Biden is taking corrective action by reversing some of Trump’s domestic and international policy excesses.
However, if one digs deeply, it is not difficult to see that American exceptionalism – a belief that has underpinned its strength, vitality, and innovation – may not be working and the US – both the progressives and the conservatives – are in denial mode. On the one hand, this has led to excessive political correctness and identity politics and on the other hand, a complete repudiation of simple public health measures in the name of pathological reference to “freedom” resulting in greater loss of lives in twelve months than the US lives lost during the Second World War.
American exceptionalism, mainly driven from the American Revolution ideals grounded in the democratic values of liberty, equality, freedom, representative democracy, and free economy, also connotes that the US is superior to other nations having an unparalleled task to transform the world, and the notions such as nothing can happen to the United States.
??There is no doubt that the United States has been the beacon of democracy, the greatest example of material achievements on the planet, and an unparalleled superpower with unmatched influence in the post-War period. However, over some time, there has been not only a relative decline in the US power, but the American exceptionalism has been also not working.
In the first, Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election was astounding for many. However, one of the factors behind American’s surprising decision of Trump’s shocking presidential victory was political correctness, which denied the problems that the US was facing. The progressive left was so obsessed with political correctness that they could not accommodate anything that did not suit their ideological framework and refused to see a divided America that pushed populists to reject the imposed political correctness. Trump was successful in connecting with the majority by smashing political decency and basic civility. During his tenure, President Trump’s popularity never dropped below forty percent, and during the Covid-19 outbreak, when Trump invoked nationalism by slamming China for the spread of the disease with the ‘China Virus’ phrase, his popularity crossed more than fifty percent. Although Trump lost his second bid for the White House and became the first incumbent president to be defeated in 28 years, he received 48 per cent of the vote and five million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. The Trump phenomenon remains powerful and may be disruptive in the future.

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria has lifted its suspension of Emirates airlines flights imposed after the carrier sought additional COVID-19 tests for passengers from Nigeria, a spokesman for the country’s aviation regulator said on Friday.
“The suspension has just been lifted, because they have complied with what we want,” said the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) spokesman in a phone call. He said further details would soon be made public in a statement.
An Emirates spokesperson said the company “can confirm that we will continue to operate services to Abuja and Lagos.”
An aviation ministry spokesman on Monday told a news conference that the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in addition to requiring a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test before flying from Nigeria, was adding an extra requirement of having a rapid test four hours before departure.
He said airlines that insisted on the additional test would be suspended until an appropriate structure was put in place to conduct the second test within four hours of departure.
In a letter to the airline’s country manager, dated Feb. 4 and titled “suspension of Emirates airlines operations to Nigeria”, the NCAA said the airline had carried passengers from Nigeria using rapid antigen tests “conducted by laboratories that are neither approved nor authorized by the appropriate regulatory bodies”.
The NCAA, in its letter, said the decision to suspend Emirates was taken because the airline failed to heed a request to either accept passengers without the rapid test until the appropriate infrastructure was in place or suspend flights to and from Nigeria until that time.
This month, UAE authorities said the airline’s passengers flying to Dubai from Nigeria would not be permitted entry if they transited via a third country and could only enter on direct flights, according to industry sources and a travel notice on the RwandAir website.

Nigeria plans to use unclaimed dividends held by companies and dormant bank accounts to finance its growing deficit and revive an economy hobbled by low oil prices, an official said.
The government will transfer company dividends which have been unclaimed for more than six-years, totalling more than 180 billion naira ($472 million), into a fund managed by Nigeria’s debt office and then borrow from it, Bode Oyetunde, presidential adviser on fiscal matters said on Thursday.
Dormant bank accounts will also be included in the plan by the government of Nigeria, which relies on oil for much of revenues and foreign exchange, Oyetunde said.
The government has been exploring ways to raise revenue after an oil price crash tipped Africa’s largest economy into its second recession in five years.
“It is a debt owed by Nigeria to Nigerians. It will be used by government to finance the budget deficit,” Oyetunde told a virtual conference on tax policy.
“We have to expand the range of instruments available to support the government fund its operation.”
The unclaimed dividends are those of companies listed on the Nigerian stock market, he said adding that funds will be available to claim if a beneficiary is identified.
Nigeria with one of lowest tax to GDP ratios in the world is reforming its tax policy so that foreign companies like Google, Uber and Microsoft, that generate revenues in the country with no local presence will be taxed.
The West African country shelved offshore borrowing last year due to COVID-19 disruptions and turned to domestic markets.
It now plans to rebase its gross domestic product to determine the current structure of its economy.
The government has been in talks with the World Bank for a $1.5 billion budget support loan which the bank has made conditional on the Nigeria carrying out reforms.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday he was “deeply optimistic” about the future of travel despite the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on airlines, airports, transit systems and road use.
The pandemic has sent tens of millions of workers home for months, slashed tourism and business travel demand and placed significant burdens on transportation services to deliver packages, vaccines and other critical goods. Much of the nation’s travel sector is again asking Congress for a new round of emergency funding.
“We will break new ground in ensuring that our economy recovers and rebuilds, in rising to the climate challenge, and in making sure transportation is an engine for equity in this country,” said Buttigieg, who was sworn in Wednesday, in an email to staff.
In 2020, there were 500 million fewer U.S. airline passengers screened at airports, down 61%. U.S. drivers drove 410 billion fewer miles in the first 11 months of the year, down 13.7%. After 9.9 billion transit trips in 2019, trips fell 80% after the pandemic began and remain down 65%.
Unions, trade groups and states want at least $130 billion in additional government assistance to rescue the struggling sector hit hard by the collapse in demand.
That figure includes $18 billion sought by state transportation departments, $40 billion for bus and vessel industries and $39.3 billion for transit.
Aviation unions seek $15 billion to keep thousands of airline employees in jobs after March 30. Airports want $17 billion, while passenger railroad Amtrak seek $1.5 billion.
Congress has approved $39 billion since March to aid transit systems, $40 billion in U.S. airline payroll assistance, $12 billion for airports, $10 billion for state transportation departments and $2 billion for bus and vessel industries.
President Joe Biden has called for $20 billion for mass transit.
In the case of the U.S. now blind optimism is not advisable, instead of fantasizing about future travel needs, you may want to focus on how to curb the spread of covid-19.

United States President Joe Biden is set to meet on Monday with a group of 10 Republican senators who have proposed $618bn in coronavirus relief, about a third of the $1.9 trillion he is seeking as congressional Democrats are poised to move ahead without Republican support.
The Republicans propose slimmer benefits, including $1,000 in direct payments to individuals earning up to $40,000 a year, or $80,000 for couples, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.
The proposal would begin to phase out the benefit after that, with no payments for those individuals earning more than $50,000, or $100,000 for couples. That’s less than Biden’s proposal for $1,400 direct payments at higher income levels.
The cornerstone of the GOP plan appears to be $160bn for the healthcare response — vaccine distribution, a “massive expansion” of testing, protective gear and funds for rural hospitals, according to the draft.
Other elements of the package are similar but come at far lesser amounts, with $20bn to reopen schools and $40bn for Paycheck Protection Program business aid.
An invitation to the GOP senators to meet at the White House came hours after the lawmakers sent Biden a letter on Sunday urging him to negotiate rather than try to ram through his relief package solely on Democratic votes.
The House and Senate are on track to vote as soon as this week on a budget resolution, which would lay the groundwork for passing an aid package under rules requiring only a simple majority vote in the closely divided Senate.The goal is to pass the legislation by March when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid is set to expire. The meeting to be hosted by Biden would amount to the most public involvement for the president in the negotiations for the next round of virus relief. Democratic and Republican lawmakers are far apart in their proposals for assistance.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that Biden had spoken with the leader of the group, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine. Though Biden wants “a full exchange of views,” Psaki reiterated that the president remains in favour of moving forward with a far-reaching relief package.
“With the virus posing a grave threat to the country, and economic conditions grim for so many, the need for action is urgent, and the scale of what must be done is large,” Psaki said.
In challenging Biden to fulfil his pledge of unity, the group said in its letter that its counterproposal will include $160bn for vaccines, testing, treatment and personal protective equipment and call for more targeted relief than Biden’s plan to issue $1,400 stimulus cheques for most Americans.

As Nigerians anxiously await the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, health experts and critical stakeholders in the health sector have expressed divergent views on whether to import the vaccines or produce them locally in the country.
This is coming just as the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday marked the first anniversary of its declaration of COVID-19 as a "public health emergency of international concern" by urging the global community to take action to bring the pandemic under control.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a year ago there were fewer than 100 cases of the disease and no deaths outside China, but the world passed 100million reported cases and is approaching 2.2 million deaths last week.


Tedros said vaccines had given the world another window of opportunity to bring the pandemic under control, and it must not be squandered by not sharing the vaccines equitably among rich and poor nations.
"The pandemic has exposed and exploited the inequalities of our world. There is now the real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic - vaccines - may exacerbate those same inequalities," the WHO chief added.
Tedros challenged the world's governments and industry leaders to work together to ensure that in the first 100 days of 2021, the vaccination of health workers and older people is underway in all countries.
He also called on those governments to share their excess doses with the WHO-organized COVAX vaccine cooperative, which distributes vaccines to poor nations.
Meanwhile, some of the health experts in Nigeria said if the country had started working on its own vaccine since 2020, it would have been expecting the result by now instead of relying on those from other countries.
They blamed Nigeria's continuous reliance on foreign products, including drugs and vaccines, on lack of political will and poor funding of research institutes.
But others argue that Nigeria has the capacity but lacks the facilities to produce vaccines and even carry out clinical trials on imported vaccines.
This is just as a report by the BBC hinted that Nigeria and other African countries may have to wait for a long time before getting the vaccines as wealthy countries have almost secured the whole vaccines.
The federal government had earlier announced that the country was expecting the first phase of the vaccines this month but later added that the vaccines were now expected to arrive in February.