₦airaland Forum

The U.S. has entered a tricky phase of the COVID-19 vaccination effort as providers try to ramp up the number of people getting first shots while also ensuring a growing number of others get second doses just when millions more Americans are becoming eligible to receive vaccines.
The need to give each person two doses a few weeks apart vastly complicates the country’s biggest-ever vaccination campaign. And persistent uncertainty about future vaccine supplies fuels worries that some people will not be able to get their second shots in time.
In some cases, local health departments and providers have said they must temporarily curb or even cancel appointments for first doses to ensure there are enough second doses for people who need them.
Nola Rudolph said she struggled to book appointments for her 71-year-old father and 68-year-old mother, who live in rural upstate New York. Everywhere she looked within driving distance was booked.
“Seeing they were eligible, I was elated,” she said. “Seeing they were in a dead zone, I went from very hopeful to hopeless again.”
She was able to arrange a second dose for her father but has not yet been able to find a slot for her mother. “It’s like going around in a circle.”
For about the past month, the U.S. has administered an average of 900,000 first doses each day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by The Associated Press. Now many of those people are due for second doses, and the average number of Americans getting second shots hit an all-time high Tuesday — 539,000 per day over the past week.
The increasing demand for second doses comes as the Biden administration is taking steps to boost the supply of doses.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients announced Tuesday that states will see their allocation of doses rise to 11 million per week beginning next week, up more than 2 million weekly doses since President Joe Biden took office.
Since the vaccine was authorized in late December, about 33 million people in the U.S. have received shots.
“It’s really important and critical to recognize that there are still not enough doses to go around,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
So far, about 10% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. About 3% has received both doses, the AP analysis showed.
Across Los Angeles County, health officials say limited supplies mean the majority of vaccinations this week will be for second doses. In the state’s Napa County, some appointments for first doses were canceled last week to ensure there would be enough for second doses.
“We’re getting a lot of the questions from community members asking, ‘Is my second dose in jeopardy?’ And right now, we don’t have an answer because it’s all dependent on the inventory that comes in from the state,” said Alfredo Pedroza, a county supervisor.
Both COVID-19 vaccines being distributed in the U.S. require two shots a few weeks apart to maximize protection. For Pfizer, the doses are supposed to be three weeks apart. For Moderna, it’s four weeks. But if needed, the booster be delayed for up to six weeks, according to the CDC, which updated its guidance late last month.
State and local health officials now emphasize that extended time frame in public messaging to alleviate worries that people might not get their second shots on time.
Federal officials have said they are confident there will be enough doses to ensure people get their second shots.
Fueling the concerns in some places is the difficulty of booking the second dose. Although many places schedule the booster when the first shot is given, others ask people to schedule them later on because of logistical issues.
Tanny O’Haley is 64 and has Parkinson’s, but he isn’t eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in Los Angeles County, where he lives. He was able to get a first dose when he accompanied his 69-year-old wife to her vaccination because the site had a leftover shot.
O’Haley has not been able to schedule his second dose despite numerous calls to local officials and the county health department. He plans to try again when he brings his wife to her second appointment on Wednesday.
“The whole experience was pretty awful,” O’Haley said.
In New Hampshire, officials are ditching the current scheduling system after thousands of people struggled to book their boosters within the recommended time — with some being given appointments for two months later. People will now get appointments for their second shots when they get their first.
New Hampshire is one of several local jurisdictions that had signed up to use the CDC’s Vaccine Administration Management System, or VAMS.
At the Las Vegas Convention Center in Nevada, another type of scheduling problem popped up last week when the site opened as a clinic dedicated only to second doses. When appointments were made available online, people eager for their first doses snapped up slots.
“We had enough vaccine — we just need to control the crowd somehow,” said JoAnn Rupiper of the Southern Nevada Health District.
People who scheduled a first dose at the site had their appointments canceled, Rupiper said. To ensure eligible people who had trouble scoring appointments online get their second shots, the convention center is allowing walk-ins.
Despite the scheduling confusion, health officials and providers say their main challenge remains the limited supplies and the variability in how many doses are distributed from week to week. Even with the increase in shipments announced by President Joe Biden’s administration, local officials and providers say they do not have enough doses to meet demand.
The shortage is one reason why Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, has noted the potential value of the one-shot vaccine by Johnson & Johnson, which recently filed for emergency use authorization. That shot is also less expensive to produce and easier to ship.
Pedroza said the cancellations last week in California’s Napa County happened after a spike in shipments a few weeks ago led the county to think it would continue getting at least as many doses. But the spike turned out to be a one-time windfall, Pedroza said.
In Seattle, UW Medicine temporarily stopped taking new appointments in late January due to limited supplies, combined with the need to give others their second doses.
“If there was more supply, we would be happy to be doing more first-dose appointments,” said Cynthia Dold, associate vice president of clinical operations at UW Medicine.
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Associated Press journalists Paul J. Weber in Texas, Nicky Forster in New York, Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco, Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin approved a joint resolution Thursday overriding Gov. Tony Evers' most recent COVID-19 state of emergency, abolishing a state-wide mask mandate. In response, Evers declared a new state of emergency. Effective immediately, Wisconsinites must again wear masks in public places.
The legislature approved Joint Resolution 3 Thursday in a 52-42 vote in the Assembly, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. Democrats were joined by seven Republicans, but it wasn't enough. The resolution terminated Evers' Executive Order #104, calling the emergency declaration "unlawful."
Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, told lawmakers to stand up against the governor. "I don't know when legislators became comfortable with delegating their authority to the executive branch, creating an office where he can do whatever he wants," Steineke said. "That's not how this was set up."
Steineke argued the pushback wasn't about masks, which were mandated in July by Evers' second public health emergency declaration. That said, Republicans also shot down an amendment introduced by Democratic lawmakers Thursday that would have implemented a statewide mask mandate, WPR reported.
Shortly afterward, Evers countered with Executive Order #105 and Emergency Order #1, complete with another mask mandate. In a statement released by the governor's office Thursday, Evers said his efforts to contain the coronavirus have been met with lawsuits and obstruction.
"Wearing a mask is the most basic thing we can do to keep each other safe," Evers said. "If the Legislature keeps playing politics and we don't keep wearing masks, we're going to see more preventable deaths, and it's going to take even longer to get our state and our economy back on track."
Republicans are very interesting. Don't they need to be politically responsible? Or do they have no real responsibility to voters? Is it Mr. Trump? Politicians who disrespect science are disgusting. In order to show you this report, the purpose is to better implement our defense measures. My friends, we will definitely win.

Drone delivery service Zipline announced Thursday that it is partnering with “a leading manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccines” to begin distributing shots to its global partner locations as soon as April.
The release, first reported by Bloomberg News, says that the San Francisco-based company has built a system that can transport medical supplies that require low temperatures, including “all leading COVID-19 vaccines.”
Zipline did not specify its partner coronavirus vaccine manufacturer, though the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine must be stored and transported in special freezers at temperatures of negative 70 degrees Celsius.
When contacted by The Hill, Pfizer did not specifically comment on whether it has partnered with Zipline, but said in a statement that it “supports Zipline’s efforts to expand access to vaccines and medicines to those in hard to reach geographies.”
“We share Zipline’s commitment to innovative solutions to ensure equity in the distribution of vaccines and medicines,” the statement added.
Zipline, which has already been delivering medical supplies to Rwanda and Ghana since 2016, said Thursday that its drones will be able to deliver additional resources to remote areas that do not easily have access to necessary health care services.
“Where you live shouldn’t determine whether or not you get a COVID-19 vaccine,” Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo said in the press release. “Rural areas across the world are being hit hard by this virus.”
“These communities face great challenges,” Rinaudo added. “We can help health systems bypass infrastructure and supply chain challenges through instant delivery.”
Zipline last year also began delivering personal protective equipment to hospitals in North Carolina overwhelmed amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Reuters reported Wednesday that Zipline has signed a deal with Nigeria’s Kaduna state to deliver COVID-19 vaccines there, which Kaduna Gov. Nasir El-Rufai said “will help ensure that millions of people in Kaduna State will always get the care they need.”
Zipline has already delivered more than 1 million doses of vaccines for other diseases in Africa over the past year, according to Reuters. The coronavirus vaccine partnership with Kaduna is also expected to include on-demand delivery of blood products, medications and other vaccines.

WASHINGTON — The federal government will open its first Covid-19 vaccination sites in California as part of the Biden administration’s push to ramp up the number of Americans receiving shots and reach those most at risk of developing severe illness.
One center will be housed in the Oakland Coliseum where the Oakland Athletics baseball team plays and the other will be on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles. Both will be adjacent to communities hardest hit by the pandemic, said Jeffrey Zients, President Joe Biden's lead Covid-19 coordinator. The facilities will be staffed mostly with federal employees.
“These sites in California are just the beginning,” Zients said. “We are working with, in partnership, in states across the country to stand up new sites and will have more to say on that in the coming weeks.”
The effort is a change in course from the Trump administration, which left the administration of the vaccine largely to the states and focused instead on the logistics of shipping the vaccine. But after states became overwhelmed in the early weeks trying to manage the demand from people seeking the vaccine, Biden’s Covid-19 advisers urged him to take a more hands-on approach.
The federal vaccination centers — which will be based in stadiums, school gyms and parking lots — will be staffed by workers from FEMA, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services. The Defense Department will also play a role in managing these community vaccination sites.
The Biden administration has been increasing the number of federal employees working on the effort and currently has directed 600 FEMA employees to work on the vaccination program, including 350 working at vaccination sites, in addition to thousands of National Guard members in 39 states.
Several states have already begun using stadiums as mass vaccination centers.
FEMA has provided $1.7 billion to 27 states to help pay for transportation, storage, and supplies for their vaccination programs, Zients said.

LOS ANGELES — Anti-vaccine protesters briefly forced officials to close the Covid-19 vaccination site at Dodger Stadium on Saturday as hundreds of people waited in their cars to receive doses, Los Angeles Fire Department officials said.
The fire department closed the stadium entrance for about an hour in the afternoon while protesters attempted to enter the parking lot, where vaccinations were being administered.
No one was arrested, but the Los Angeles Police Department deployed "a sufficient amount of officers" to the stadium, a spokesperson said. L.A. police also said that all vaccines would be administered despite the delay.
California "is working around the clock to provide life-saving vaccines to those on the frontlines of this pandemic," Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement posted to Twitter. "We will not be deterred or threatened."
Several of the demonstrators were seen not wearing masks and carrying signs suggesting the coronavirus pandemic is a "scam," according to social media posts.
In another series of videos posted to Twitter, protesters appeared to discourage people waiting in line from getting the vaccine.
The anti-vaccine protest coincided with Los Angeles County public health officials detecting a second case of the coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, which was first found in the United Kingdom. The new strain is thought to be more contagious than the original coronavirus, prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to estimate that it will become the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.
More than 1.1 million Covid-19 cases and 16,647 deaths have been confirmed across Los Angeles County as of Saturday, according to the public health department.
Despite high rates of Covid-19 in L.A., anti-mask protests have sprung up throughout the region in recent weeks. Demonstrators have stormed shopping malls and grocery stores, urging residents to ditch their masks and demanding that California reopen the economy.



There are many irrational phenomena in the world's most technologically advanced countries, which make people feel funny but sad. No wonder former president trump has so many fanatical supporters. Is this democracy still democracy?

Jan 27 (Reuters) - Severe COVID-19 infections are beginning to abate in many parts of the United States even as the death toll mounts, signaling an end to the pandemic’s post-holiday surge and prompting some states to ease public health restrictions.
A slow but steady reduction in the number of Americans entering hospitals with the disease has paralleled a choppy rollout of vaccines that also are expected to reduce spread of the coronavirus that causes it.
“We’re starting to see the light at the end of the horizon,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy told CNN on Wednesday. “I think this is now going in the right direction. It’s slow, admittedly.”
About 4,300 Americans died of COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, the third highest daily toll since the first U.S. case was identified almost exactly a year ago on Jan. 20, 2020. The United States, the country hardest hit by the pandemic, reported a total of 25.31 million cases and 425,120 deaths by day’s end on Tuesday.
Concerns remain that new variants of the virus from such places as Brazil and the United Kingdom might further spread infection, and the U.S. vaccine rollout has been uneven at best, frustrating doctors and patients alike who are having difficulty signing up for and receiving their shots.
But the number of patients sick enough to be hospitalized, a key indicator of the disease’s pace, spread and severity, has trended lower, falling 17.7% from a peak on Jan. 6 to 108,709, the lowest since Dec. 12, according to a Reuters tally.
Cases surged due to holiday gatherings starting with Thanksgiving in November and running through New Year’s Day, overwhelming hospitals and medical systems nationwide. But with the cases and hospitalizations on the decline, some U.S. states have slightly eased some of the tightest public health restrictions.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom this week lifted a stay-at-home order that had affected much of the most populous U.S. state. The order allows hair salons to open with modifications and permits restaurants to reopen for patio dining. However many restrictions remain, including a ban on indoor worship services that affects most of the state.
In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine said on Twitter on Wednesday that the state will make vaccines available next week to 91,000 teachers and personnel needed for in-person schooling of students. The state aims to reopen schools in March.
“At this point it’s safe to say the holiday surge was anticipated, the holiday surge did happen, but the holiday surge is over,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State has said that the closure of schools, amid COVID-19 surge, could cause a set back to the society, a statement issued by the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Abba Anwar, on Friday, said.

The governor, who made the observation in Kano at a meeting with Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) and order stakeholders, at the Government House, said there was, therefore, a dire need to fight the pandemic, through all available avenues. “There is a dire need to fight the pandemic, but people should clearly understand the repercussions of certain actions in the process. “The issue is not that of closing schools. When you close schools, it is another tragedy. Because, if you close schools with the intent that you take students away from COVID-19, the same pandemic is capable of following them into their respective homes. “Closure of schools would take students and the system of education back again, it is because of this, that we exempted teachers from staying at home. Unlike other civil servants, whom we ordered must not come to work, but stay at home,” he explained. He urged the people of the state to adhere strictly to COVID-19 protocols, while assuring them of government’s commitment to the state’s free and compulsory primary and secondary education policy. The governor urged parents to help teachers and the government in making sure that their children always complied with COVID-19 protocols.

Nigerian authorities reopened schools across the country on January 18th despite a jump in confirmed cases of COVID-19. But while millions of students are excited to return to class, health authorities are urging caution. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.

I think we should proceed with caution! Although being able to go to school is a good thing for students, it would be too tragic if they are infected! The immunity of students is still very low.

The year 2020 will not be forgotten in a hurry. A leap year ushering in the Covid-19 pandemic which has claimed millions of lives globally and has left the world’s economy in tatters.
If any industry is almost exempt from the decimating effect of Covid-19, it would be Nigeria’s expanding contemporary music industry. The qualifier ‘almost’ is critical, in view of the leaps and bounds of growth that Afrobeats experienced in spite of the dire constraint of the times.
Local lockdowns meant restrictions on movement and a crackdown on gatherings. Consequently, there was a massive reduction in income for practicing musicians who rely on performing at concerts, tours and social events.
Davido, one of Nigeria’s Afrobeats stars, cancelled his North American tour for the album A Good Time in March 2020, shortly after the World Health Organisation declared the Covid-19 disease as a pandemic. He returned to Lagos and began recording songs for his fourth studio album, A Better Time. 
Davido was not the only musician who utilised the time afforded by the pandemic to tap into his creativity. This was the experience of most Nigerian musicians if the explosion of album releases in 2020 are anything to go by.
The year 2020 will be remembered as the year that brought albums back into fashion, the first wave of its kind in about a decade since the zeitgeist shifted in favour of singles. The album, which had all but become an archival vestige, returned to the front burner in either the long play (LP) or extended play (EP) format.
‘Vibes and Insha Allah’ is trendy slang for ‘cruise control’ aptly describing the ‘whatever happens happens’ mood occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also the name of rapper Reminisce’s EP, which he personally produced in his home studio.
Although the death of octogenarian highlife maestro Victor Olaiya in February predated the Covid-influenced lockdown, the death of his younger colleague, Majek Fashek, happened in the murk of it. The deaths of Cameroon’s Manu Dibango, Democratic Republic of Congo’s Aurlus Mabele and Mali’s Mory Kanté hit close to home, leaving big shoes to fill in the ‘world music’ scene.
It seemed timely for highlife duo The Cavemen to release their debut album Roots in the same year a highlife legend passed. Their intimate rendering and reimagination of Igbo heartland guitar-driven highlife is easily the most accomplished resurgence that highlife has enjoyed since Flavour N’Bania sampled Rex Lawson.

The new coronavirus variant first seen in the United Kingdom is likely to become the dominant strain in the United States by March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a new report Friday. The mutation is believed to be more contagious, and research shows it could experience "rapid growth" in the early part of this year.
The CDC explored a number of different scenarios involving the strain, which experts believe is about 50% more transmissible than the original. In each one, the new strain made up the majority of cases in the U.S. within the next two months.
"Multiple lines of evidence indicate that B.1.1.7 is more efficiently transmitted than are other SARS-CoV-2 variants," the CDC said.
The variant, known as B.1.1.7, was first detected in the U.K. in mid-December and has since spread to over 30 countries. The variant has so far been detected in at least 10 states, with approximately 76 cases as of January 13, although the actual number is expected to be much higher.
This week, coronavirus cases in the U.S. topped 23 million, with over 392,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The CDC said the new strain "warrants universal and increased compliance with mitigation strategies, including distancing and masking. Higher vaccination coverage might need to be achieved to protect the public."
Researchers reiterated the need to stick to health guidelines such as wearing a mask, proper hygiene and social distancing, among other things, to continue limiting the spread of the virus while the nation rapidly works to vaccinate the most vulnerable. The new strain may also make achieving so-called "herd-immunity" more difficult.
The CDC warned that while no variant is proven to cause more severe cases, "a higher rate of transmission will lead to more cases, increasing the number of persons overall who need clinical care, exacerbating the burden on an already strained health care system, and resulting in more deaths."
New research suggests that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine can still protect against the mutation, as well as over a dozen other strains. However, the Trump administration has failed to meet targets for getting Americans vaccinated, with only around 12 million doses administered as of Saturday.
As fears of the U.K. strain escalate, the CDC has issued stricter travel guidelines that require all international travelers to present negative coronavirus tests before entering the country.

Nigeria has launched a much-delayed programme that promises to provide jobs for more than 750,000 young people amid worsening youth unemployment.
The scheme, launched this month, is being hailed by government officials as the largest job creation initiative in the country’s history.
The 52bn naira ($136m) Special Public Works (SPW) programme will target low-skilled workers. From October, it offers three-month job placements, paying 20,000 naira ($53) a month, which is less than the minimum wage of 30,000 naira, but a significant help in a country where so many young people are without work.
Since 2015, the number of under 24-year-olds who are unemployed has almost tripled to 14 million, 40% of the youth labour force, according to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics. About 83 million of Nigeria’s population of 200 million live on less than $1 a day. President Muhammadu Buhari caused outrage in 2018 when comments he made at a Commonwealth event in London were widely interpreted as suggesting that young people in Nigeria caused their own joblessness.
Months of dispute between politicians and the government over control of the initiative meant the much lauded programme has been delayed since the middle of last year.
Politicians and officials have attracted criticism for wanting to take an active role in selecting young people in their constituencies who qualify for the programme.
In recent years, Nigeria’s economy has suffered from a combination of dwindling oil revenues and policies widely seen as harmful to small businesses. The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has added to the problems.
According to the World Bank, the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak will push a further 5 million people into poverty.
Festus Keyamo, Nigeria’s minister for labour and employment, said the jobs programme “is also aimed at shielding the most vulnerable from the ravaging effects of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
“Our target is to immediately engage the 774,000 selected unemployed Nigerians for the programme to execute carefully selected projects,” he said.
The SPW is one of a number of initiatives launched by the government to provide grants, loans or short-term jobs in an attempt to improve employment prospects.
But the management and effectiveness of the SPW programme has been called into question. Critics have also said that short-term jobs, while offering much-need cash support and experience, do little to dent long-term unemployment and poverty.
Last year, Nigeria’s parliament called for the programme to be halted, amid a power-tussle between MPs and the government minister in charge of the scheme. Many MPs want some control over the distribution of jobs. “It is worthwhile for us to know how the distribution of jobs to Nigerians and those who we are representing in our constituencies is handled,” one politician said, claiming the government was seeking to sideline MPs.
The application process is via a government portal.

The head of the Food and Drug Administration on Friday urged states to "strongly" consider vaccinating lower-priority groups, as the nation struggles to speed up coronavirus vaccination efforts.
The comments by FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn came as President-elect Joe Biden's team said his incoming administration would release all available doses of coronavirus vaccines to the states, in a reversal of current Trump administration policy, according to The Associated Press.
States have been giving vaccination priority to hospital employees, such as doctors and nurses, and long-term care patients.
"We've heard in the press that some folks have said, 'OK, I'm waiting to get all of my health-care workers vaccinated. We have about 35 percent uptake of the vaccine.' I think it reasonable to expand that" to other groups, Hahn told a gathering of the Alliance for Health Policy.
"I would strongly encourage that we move forward with giving states the opportunity to be more expansive in who they can give the vaccine to."
The U.S. government has been stockpiling a significant amount of vaccine to make sure there's enough to provide for the second necessary doses.
“The president-elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible,” said T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for the Biden transition team.
Biden “supports releasing available doses immediately, and believes the government should stop holding back vaccine supply so we can get more shots in Americans’ arms now."
The move would allow many more Americans access that first shot. But it would put pressure on vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna to ramp up production and make those second doses available.
The Pfizer vaccine requires a second dose about 21 days after the first, while the Moderna has a 28-day interval.
Word of the Biden transition plan came within hours of World Health Organization experts saying Friday there might be some more leeway for time between shots.
The agency said current data shows those 21- and 28-day gaps could be lengthened to as long as six weeks.
“WHO’s recommendation at present is that the interval between doses may be expended up to 42 days (6 weeks), on the basis of currently available trial data,” according to a statement by the agency’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on immunization (SAFE).
“Should additional data become available on longer intervals between doses, revision of this recommendation will be considered.”
More than 365,000 Americans have died since the pandemic reached U.S. shores, according to a rolling count by NBC News.
Biden's inauguration is set for Jan. 20.
This is a developing story, please refresh here for updates.
President-elect Biden finally began to act in the fight against the new crown epidemic, but he faced the chaos left by Trump. It is simply incomprehensible, how can Americans believe Trump's words, can hundreds of thousands of deaths be ignored?

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to progress, the first vaccines have been rolled out, and several countries are planning to complete the first round of universal immunization within the first quarter of this year. However, vaccine uptake is a concern that has taken center stage in the recent past, with a flood of misinformation and doubts about the safety and utility of the vaccine spreading far and wide.
A recent preprint research paper published on the medRxiv* server in January 2021 reports that vaccine acceptance is low even among healthcare workers (HCWs) in the USA. This is a significant issue as this segment of society is typically entrusted with the task of communicating reliable information about such preventive measures to their patients, which is associated with greater compliance with vaccination campaigns and schedules. Moreover, their participation in these programs models adherence to the community at large.
The current study used a cross-sectional design based on an online questionnaire. All participants were above 18 years of age and were working in a healthcare facility of some kind. HCWs were classified into four groups, namely, direct medical provider (DMP), Direct patient care provider (DPCP), Advanced practice providers, and administrative staff who have little direct patient contact.
HCWs were asked about their perception of personal risk of acquiring COVID-19 and whether they had taken care of COVID-19 patients. Moreover, they were asked if they were willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine once available. Possible reasons for not accepting the vaccine were explored as well.
The researchers received approximately 3,500 responses, with over half being below the age of 40 years. Three in four were female, and over 80% were white. Again, 80% had taken a Bachelor’s or higher degree, 44% said they were Democrats, and about 60% denied any comorbidities.
About two-thirds of them were working in an urban healthcare setup, either primary care or subspecialties, with almost 80% being DPCPs. Close to 90% of them felt they were at risk of acquiring COVIDD-19, but only a fifth felt they would develop serious disease symptoms. Less than a tenth were sure they would not get the infection.

Miguel Cabezola, a driver for United Parcel Service Inc in Tucson, Arizona, complained on March 27 to U.S. workplace safety regulators, alleging the company was taking a lax approach to social distancing, sanitizing equipment and quarantining workers with COVID-19 symptoms. He hoped for an inspection of the facility that would force changes to protect worker safety.
Instead, the state arm of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) summarized Cabezola’s concerns in an email to company management, reviewed the UPS response and closed the file.
Over the next two months, a COVID-19 outbreak infected more than 40 Tucson UPS workers - including a manager who eventually died - and caused delivery delays throughout southern Arizona, according to interviews with six Tucson UPS workers and local union officials of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Cabezola’s complaint to the regulator, along with that of another worker in May, had “zero effect,” said Karla Schumann, head of the local Teamsters union representing UPS workers. Asked about the outbreak, UPS expressed regret about the manager’s death and said it has strengthened protocols requiring social distancing and sanitation since the early days of the pandemic.
The UPS outbreak is among dozens of cases identified by Reuters where OSHA largely disregarded workers who reported lax pandemic safety practices, according to agency records.
Reuters identified the workplace outbreaks through federal, state and local government data and news accounts detailing infections and deaths. The news agency examined the regulatory response through OSHA data on complaints filed by workers and records of resulting inspections.
Reuters identified 106 U.S. workplaces where employees complained of slipshod pandemic safety practices around the time of outbreaks - and regulators either never inspected the facilities or, in some cases, waited months to do so, according to the OSHA records. The agency never inspected 70 of those workplaces, where at least 4,500 workers were infected by the coronavirus and 26 died after contracting COVID-19, according to the Reuters analysis.
The workers’ regulatory complaints came from a cross-section of companies that included some of America’s best-known firms, including Tesla Inc and Tyson Foods Inc .
As of mid-December, just 12 of the 106 facilities have been penalized in response to workers’ complaints. The complaints came from a wide range of workplaces, from meatpacking plants and factories to e-commerce warehouses and nursing homes. Their employees alleged failures to enforce social distancing and mask-wearing; managers pressuring sick employees to work; and a lack of notification to employees about co-workers’ infections.

Di Lagos State Govment make dis announcement on Monday say all public and private schools below tertiary level for di state Lagos State go reopen for di second term 2020/21 academic session from Monday, 18th of January, 2021.
For inside statement, di Commissioner for Education, Mrs Folasade Adefisayo say dis decision dey in line wit federal goment directives plus di second wave of di COVID-19 Pandemic.
She ask all schools to make efforts to comply wit all di Covid-19 requirements for resumption schools.
"No be just for di improvement of overall school operations but for di safe reopening of academic activities to support di Lagos State Govment quest for full return." she add am.
Di Commissioner also advise make schools get flexible plans wia students and teachers wey dey sick fit teach or learn from home through available online platforms.
Wearing of facemasks at all times, physical distancing, regular hand washing wit soap under running water and maintaining high standard of personal hygiene within di school premises na di order wey health authorities don put for ground for schools to follow as dem dey reopen.

The Federal Government has announced the suspension of 100 passports belonging to Nigerian passengers who refused to undergo second Covid-19 tests immediately after arriving Nigeria.
This was disclosed by the Chairman, Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Mr Boss Mustapha, at the daily press briefing with newsmen on Tuesday in Abuja.
Mr. Mustapha also added that the names of the Nigerians who refused to take a second test would be published on January 1st, 2021 and their passports suspended for 6 months.
“With effect from Jan. 1, 2021, passports of the first 100 passengers, who failed to take their day-seven post-arrival polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, would be published in the national dailies,” he said.
He added that with the rising number of cases in Nigeria, the FG aimed to ensure proper containment of the disease to reduce risk to health workers.
”With the increasing number of infections and hospitalisation, our objectives are to: ensure that infection, prevention and control (IPC) is properly instituted to minimise spread and exposure of health care workers to the virus.Ensure that those who require hospitalisation are well managed; those requiring medical attention for other ailments gain access to Treatment at medical facilities; and critical care is available and deployed, especially where oxygen is needed.
Nairametrics reported last week that the Federal Government announced that it would suspend the passports of 100 Nigerians for 6 months and also publish their passport numbers for “flouting obligation to test within 7 days of arrival in Nigeria from overseas travel.”

This is right! Now that the situation is so bad, we should all consciously accept the Covid-19 test and maintain social distancing in public.

The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 Tuesday disclosed that there is a shortage of oxygen needed to manage patients receiving treatments in isolation centres across the country.
It further disclosed that treatment facilities are currently struggling to keep up with bed spaces needed for the increasing numbers of patients needing admission.
Noting that some states are turning a blind eye to the obvious disregard of laid down safety protocols, especially with regards to social gatherings, the PTF therefore urged State Governors to enforce strict adherence to the safety protocols that have agreed on collectively.
The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, made this known during the Presidential Task Force on covid-19 briefing in Abuja.
He said, “Our colleagues, the Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) are here today because of the cases that we faced across the country. Treatment centres are filling up, and we are struggling to keep up. We are struggling to find the oxygen to manage cases. Every night we are faced with phone calls of patients desperate for care. So, unfortunately, January will be a tough month for all of us. It will be tough but we still have an opportunity to do what we need to do.
“We have been liaising with Executive Governors of States across the country to be more purposeful in implementing the measures that we have agreed on collectively. We have seen some of them doing that but many of the States across the country have not; they pretend as if there will be no consequence. This is the reality we are faced with and we have got to brace ourselves for January.”
The Minister for State for Health, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora, in his address, added: “The fatality rate at 1.49 percent despite increasing number of active cases as well as morbidity is evidence of scaled up activity and quality of care at the isolation centres.
“All Federal Tertiary Hospitals who obviously run levels 2 and 3 isolation centres have been directed to improve/scale up Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures in order to improve on treatment outcomes and enhance safety of the frontline health personnel. This is coming at the backdrop of the recent upsurge in the affected health workers and the unfortunate demise of some.

The United States’ top infectious disease expert has warned that holiday travel could push the country to a “critical point” in the coronavirus pandemic and that the worst may be yet to come.
“I share the concern of President-elect [Joe] Biden that as we get into the next few weeks, it might actually get worse,” Dr Anthony Fauci told CNN on Sunday.
Biden, who will take office on January 20, cautioned on Wednesday that the nation’s “darkest days are ahead of us – not behind us”.
In recent weeks, there has been a surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths across the country.
The US has recorded an average of 185,903 new infections over the past seven days, while the number of people in hospital with the disease reached 117,344, according to COVID Tracking Project data.
On Sunday, the number of cases recorded in the US topped 19 million as the death toll from the disease surpassed 332,000, both by far the highest totals in the world.
US holiday travel this year was significantly lower than in previous years, but air travel averaged more than one million passengers a day for six consecutive days last week, according to the Transportation Security Agency.
Following last month’s Thanksgiving holiday, US coronavirus cases surged sharply in December, with more than 200,000 new cases and at times more than 3,000 deaths daily.
With intensive care units in many hospitals near capacity, Fauci reiterated that the country might be facing a “surge upon a surge”.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams, in an interview with ABC on Sunday, also said he was “very concerned” about the post-holiday surge.
But with new vaccines now moving across the country – going first to front-line health workers and those in long-term care facilities – Americans have seen a glimmer of hope.
Still, initial vaccine shipments fell short of promises by the federal government.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was among those publicly critical of the process, but on Sunday she pointed to signs of improvement.
“It’s moving in the right direction,” she told CNN, after Trump administration officials apologised for vaccine delivery shortfalls.
“We are making great progress, but we need the federal government to do their part,” she said.
But Fauci played down the shortfall as a normal hiccup in a massively ambitious project.
“Whenever you roll out a large programme … like this, in the beginning, it always starts slow and then starts to gain momentum,” he told CNN.
He said he was “pretty confident” that by April all higher-priority people would have been able to get vaccinated, clearing the way for the general population to be inoculated.

The Academy of Medicine Specialties of Nigeria, AMSN, has called on the federal government to expedite action on providing the environment for a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine for Nigerians.

In a statement made available to Vanguard, the AMSN endorsed vaccination for all eligible groups at high risk of infection from COVID-19.

“We believe that the vaccine trials and the FDA and ACIP data evaluation process have been robust and transparent. In other countries across the world, regulatory bodies have also endorsed the vaccine, and similar processes will be followed globally to evaluate each upcoming candidate vaccine.

The money and goodwill extended to restaurants early in the pandemic are drying up.
Independent restaurant owners say that lifelines extended by landlords, banks and vendors when the pandemic first hit the U.S. are ending, while federal loans made as part of pandemic-related stimulus programs are long gone.
The bleak financial picture means that many more restaurants could close in the coming months, adding to the tens of thousands of restaurants that have already shut during the pandemic.
The timing couldn’t be worse. More states and localities have ordered restaurants to close their dining rooms again to curb the virus’s spread, with New York City among the latest to suspend indoor service earlier this month. Outdoor patios that helped carry restaurants through warmer months aren’t popular in much of the U.S. now, and landlords and suppliers who extended help earlier in the pandemic face challenges of their own after months of customers falling behind.
For independent restaurants, the cash crunch is forcing hard decisions about whether they should take on additional debt to survive—provided they can get loans at all.
Peter Mihajlov, co-founder of Parasole Restaurant Holdings Inc. group of restaurants in the Minneapolis area, said his banks agreed to defer principal payments on loans after the March shutdown. Now those same banks are taking their time in responding to his requests for further deferrals, he said.
“The hand of fate is now within an inch away from the off switch. The industry is already on life support,” said Mr. Mihajlov, who closed three of his restaurants during the pandemic and is limping along at the other seven after Minnesota suspended indoor dining last month.
More than 110,000 restaurants and bars have closed for good or fallen dormant since the pandemic hit, a figure that represents at least 17% of all eating and drinking places in the U.S., according to estimates this month from the National Restaurant Association. Of the 6,000 operators surveyed by the trade group, 37% said they didn’t expect to survive the next six months without help.
Restaurants have lobbied Congress for a bill that would allocate $120 billion in grants to the industry. That sum isn’t included in lawmakers’ $900 billion coronavirus-relief package, which does restart the Paycheck Protection Program, a federal small-business loan program tapped by many restaurants earlier in the pandemic. Restaurants that took the earlier PPP loans will gain the ability to deduct the payroll costs and other expenses from their taxes, something the industry had pushed for.
States and cities that have established grant programs for restaurants have been flooded with requests for help. Los Angeles County started a $5.6 million fund to provide grants of $30,000 to restaurants earlier this month. Demand crashed the online application site in its first day after it received thousands of inquiries, the county said. It reached the cap of 2,500 applications the first day after reopening.

O'FALLON, Mo. — Several states say they have been told to expect far fewer doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in its second week of distribution, prompting worries about potential delays in shots for health care workers and long-term care residents.
But senior Trump administration officials on Thursday downplayed the risk of delays, citing a confusion over semantics, while Pfizer said its production levels have not changed.
The first U.S. doses were administered Monday, and already this week, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly health care workers, have been vaccinated. The pace is expected to increase next week, assuming Moderna gets federal authorization for its vaccine.

Over 11 million Nigerians may fall into poverty by 2022 due to COVID-19 repercussions, suggests a study by the World Bank, according to a report by Premium Times.
As per reports, a large portion of urban dwellers depending on service-sector, and non-farm business in Nigeria is expected to fall in the category.
Published under Nigeria Development Update (NDU) in the World Bank the report reads in part, "before the COVID-19 crisis, the poverty rate was forecast to remain virtually unchanged, with the number of poor people set to rise to 90.0 million by 2022 due to natural population growth. Yet the poverty rate is now forecast to rise to 45.2 per cent by 2022, with 100.9 million people living in poverty."
NDU reportedly evaluates recent social and economic developments and prospects in the country and places them in a longer-term globally.
As per the report, which is titled; 'Rising to the Challenge: Nigeria's Covid-19 Response',
"Simulations suggest that 10.9 million Nigerians may fall into poverty due to the COVID-19 crisis, a large share of whom are set to be urban dwellers who depend on service-sector, non-farm business income. Before the COVID-19 crisis, the poverty rate was forecast to remain virtually unchanged, with the number of poor people set to rise to 90.0 million by 2022 due to natural population growth. While poverty has traditionally been concentrated among rural households dependent on agriculture, more than one-third of those falling into poverty due to the COVID-19 crisis are projected to be urban residents, around one-third are projected to live in households whose heads work in services, and almost half are projected to live in households whose heads work in nonfarm enterprises".

In the midst of desperate international efforts to find a permanent solution to the debilitating Coronavirus pandemic, Nigeria and Nigerians have a cause to massage their ego as contributing somewhat to the search. Two Nigerian nationals – medical doctors – are in the news for their activism in scientific growth, part of which is directly related to the making of a COVID-19 vaccine presently thrilling the world.
But there is a gloomy side to the story, manifested in the absence of an enabling and conducive environment for Nigerians to shine more in solving world medical and scientific problems; and that the few Nigerians in the limelight now are there courtesy of facilities provided by other countries to which they migrated in pursuit of professional and career fulfilment.
In a moment of glory, a Nigerian’s ground-breaking work is signaling the beginning of the end for the disease. Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu who studied Medicine at the University of Calabar in 2003, interned at the Ebonyi State University Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, before going to Yale University for further studies; is leading the Pfizer trial for the coronavirus vaccine in the United States. He is the Yale principal investigator on multiple investigational therapeutic and preventative clinical trials for COVID-19, including remdesivir, now United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved, leronlimab and remdesivir and tocilizumab combination therapy, as well as the Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine trial.
It is indeed cheering that several Nigerians were well-trained in the country’s educational system and are contributing to scientific knowledge and interventions globally. This again vindicates local trainers and training institutions. Notwithstanding, Nigeria remains mainly dependent on foreign countries for vaccine and expert medical care, and lament about medical tourism. The paradoxical equation calls for a reflection on how Nigeria is raising medical experts for other countries, but in deficit of medics. In effect, while Nigerian trained medics are some of the best and most sought after globally as health care solution providers; the nation is grossly deficient in providing health services to its 200 million population, prompting a high rate of medical tourism by Nigerians.
Training experts with taxpayers’ money, but not retaining them due to poor welfare package and unconducive operating environment, is another form of capital flight from the country. If nothing is done to reverse this trend, Nigeria’s health sector may become like the oil sector that exports crude oil and imports refined petroleum product. In such a scenario, which is increasingly manifesting, medical tourism increases for Nigerian patients who can afford it, only to be treated by focused and committed Nigerian trained doctors, Meanwhile, the majority who have no means, invariably suffer and often die untimely. Nigeria’s loss, is the gain of other countries, where the conditions are more suitable. It is a shame that the country has brains, but cannot retain them at home.
This is happening because for the country’s rulers, self-interest takes precedence over public good. They neither care about education nor the health care of citizens. Public hospitals, which they once qualified as “consulting clinics”, become mortuaries in their glare. An Octogenarian and past leader of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr. Edmundson Thompson Akpabio said recently: “The NMA under my leadership did everything possible to persuade the government to see the need to give a little more attention to improve the grossly inadequate Health Care System in Nigeria. All our pleas fell on deaf ears…”
Looking ahead, the Nigerian Academy of Science (NAS); Raw Material Research and Development Council (RMRDC), Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) should rise up to the occasion and work with Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) to mobilise Nigeria’s human resources. Nigeria can get strong support from some of these health professionals in the diaspora to rebuild her ailing health sector. They can also support the setting up of vaccine and prophylactics production facilities in the country. But there is no alternative to good governance that will ensure an environment friendly for professional excellence.

Nigeria expects to license by April one of the vaccines under development globally for Covid-19, the West African nation’s drugs regulator said.
“We are looking at the end of the first quarter of next year or the beginning of the second quarter” to approve a shot for use in Nigeria, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control Director-General Mojisola Adeyeye said in an interview on Wednesday.
Africa’s most-populous country also expects to benefit from the World Health Organization-backed Covax initiative, which is working to improve access to vaccines for 92 low- and medium-income countries, Adeyeye said. The Covax partnership is also operating on a similar timeline for licensing its first coronavirus vaccine, she said.
While Nigeria has recorded only 71,000 cases of Covid-19 and fewer than 1,200 deaths from the illness, cases of the disease have been climbing again this month, with 550 cases registered on Dec. 8. However, testing rates have been low with about 810,000 performed in a country with a population of more than 200 million.
“The Covax facility will supply vaccines for 20% of the population,” said Adeyeye. “Nigeria will need to procure theirs from whichever company they want or whichever company NAFDAC certifies” to meet the needs of the rest of the population.
Nafdac has introduced guidelines to accelerate the licensing of Covid-19 vaccines that have already been approved by regulators including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, she said. The expedited review should take 15 days instead of several months, according to Adeyeye. WHO-approved shots will also undergo the fast-track process, she said.
Doses supplied by Covax are intended to enable participating countries to protect “their most vulnerable groups” starting with health-care workers, a spokesman for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which is heading the project with the WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said by email.
While vaccine manufacturers are yet to submit applications to NAFDAC, Nigerian officials met with Pfizer Inc. several months ago, as well as the makers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine when they were starting Phase III clinical trials, Adeyeye said.
“We told them that until the data is very robust we cannot register their product or even start the process,” she said.
The Nigerian regulator hasn’t received any data on shots being produced by Chinese companies, in comparison to the information published by western firms such as Pfizer, Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc.
“We don’t know much about the vaccine from China,” Adeyeye said. “If it has been tested in the public arena, in the scientific arena, if it has been submitted to WHO, yes we will welcome any product from China.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced Tuesday that the state’s broad coronavirus restrictions around restaurants, gyms and indoor gatherings will be extended another three weeks through the new year.
Inslee said during a news conference Tuesday that state restrictions put in place in mid-November will be extended to Jan. 4. They were set to expire Dec. 14.
“We are seeing some signs the current restrictions are working. But our hospitals are still on the brink. Therefore, I am extending existing restrictions for three weeks – ending January 4th,” Inslee said in a post on Twitter. “It is a dangerous time in Washington. We need to buckle down through the holidays.”
Inslee added he was also making an additional $50 million in business grants available for businesses impacted by the restrictions.
In November, Inslee announced the sweeping restrictions, including shutting down indoor dining at restaurants and bars and limiting outdoor service to parties of five, closing gyms, fitness centers and movie theaters, and prohibiting indoor gatherings with people outside your household unless the participants have quarantined and tested negative.

Current funding gap in HIV response could widen due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an international non-governmental organisation, AIDs Healthcare Foundation (AHF), has said.
AHF is a global AIDS organisation operating in 41 countries, including Nigeria. It spoke through a statement it issued to commemorate the 2020 World AIDS Day.
The organisation said the global AIDS response has consistently fallen short each year by up to $6 billion of what is needed to fund efforts around the world.
“This gap will likely widen further with the COVID-19 pandemic,” it said.
World AIDS Day is marked on December 1 annually to honour the many lives lost from the disease as well as the people living with HIV.
The Day is also celebrated to raise awareness about the disease and the need to know one’s status through HIV testing.
The theme for the 2020 World AIDS Day is “Global solidarity, shared responsibility.” Nigeria, however, joins the commemoration with a localised theme “United to End AIDS in the midst of COVID-19.”
According to the most recent UNAIDS statistics, 38 million people are living with HIV/AIDS around the world, and in 2019 alone, 1.7 million people became newly infected and 690,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses.
In Nigeria alone, about 45,000 people died from AIDS-related diseases last year.
This figure is likely to increase as donor funding for HIV could be under threat due to the global and national economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All but five of the 85 residents of a West Virginia nursing home have tested positive for Covid-19, the facility reported on its website Wednesday.
The Stonerise Moundsville facility, which is located in the city of Moundsville, was ordered closed to all visitors by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, the local NBC News affiliate WTOV reported.
Members of the West Virginia National Guard have been “on hand to help” with the mass outbreak, the affiliate reported.
West Virginia has recorded more than 43,000 Covid-19 infections and nearly 700 deaths due to the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest NBC News data.
This is not good news! Older people are much less resistant to covid-19 than younger people and have a much higher mortality rate! The problem is that the American public has not paid enough attention to the new coronavirus until now.Whose problem is this?

Snowtown USA, a festival that takes place in Watertown N.Y., has announced updates regarding the ongoing pandemic.
The Snowtown USA committee announced on Wednesday that the 2021 festival, scheduled to take place in the upcoming winter, is officially cancelled.
The event is held annually in the North Country and typically hosts hundreds of community members as they participate in a range of winter events and activities.
The Committee shared that this decision was made as the COVID-19 pandemic has put limitations on social contact and large gatherings.
The group additionally shared that they “look forward to Snowtown 2022.

Abuja — The federal government said it has set aside N10 billion in the 2021 budget for the purpose of procurement and evaluation of COVID-19 Vaccines when they are ready.
It has also said that a task team has been constituted to help in mobilising resources and advising government on how best to utilise such resources to effectively deal with the pandemic.
The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire made the disclosures while speaking at the media briefing by the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 pandemic in Abuja yesterday.
He said: "Nigeria had floated a vaccine company known as, Bio-Vaccine Nigeria Limited. It is a joint venture between the federal government and a private company to carry out not only research but also to look at the options of producing Vaccines in licence.


"Federal government has earmarked N10 billion in the 2021 national budget to serve as a reserve fund, which will be for the development of vaccines and could also be deployed for procurement of Vaccines".
Ehanire said that the federal government has set up a task team made up of the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Central Bank of Nigeria and CACOVID to help government in mobilising resources needed for providing vaccines.
The minister further said that some authorities overseeing the development of the vaccines have given indications that within three weeks, some of the vaccines might be ready for use under emergency powers.
According to Ehanire, "Now that vaccines are known to be close at hand, the Federal Ministry of Health is taking measures towards vaccine security, for which an 18-man National COVID-19 Vaccine Task Team with seven terms of Reference will be inaugurated this week. The task team will include generating strategies for acquisition, deployment and options for licensed production by Biovaccine Nigeria Ltd. Our options with WHO/GAVI led Covax facility remain our first line of engagement".
This is really good news! Our government is doing its utmost to fight the epidemic, and we look forward to the early availability of vaccines so that everyone’s health can be protected.

Governors of the 36 states of the federation yesterday highlighted challenges foisted on them by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to them the pandemic almost ruined governance and the economies of the states.
The Chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) and Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. John Kayode Fayemi, while hosting the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mrs. Amina Mohammed, yesterday in Abuja, added that the states were severely affected as many could not meet their obligations to workers and others.
Mohammed visited the forum as part of her tour of some West African countries, including Ghana, Sierra Leone, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.
Fayemi said although the virus hit Nigeria in March 2020, later than other countries, the country now has over 64,090 confirmed cases and 1,154 deaths.
Other impacts, he said, included the fall in oil prices, contracting tax base, loss of sources of livelihood, unemployment, youth restiveness (#EndSARS protest), increasing the inflation rate, worsening exchange rate and decline in productivity due to necessary lockdown measures initiated globally and nationally.
Explaining how the various states handled the pandemic, Fayemi stated that as a responsive group, "we worked collaboratively, co-opting ideas and welcoming support from critical stakeholders, including partners and the private sector.
"At the wake of the pandemic, we worked with the federal government to ensure the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development got all the support they required in delivering swift containment measures".
Also, at the National Economic Council (NEC) level, "we developed a COVID-19 response plan encompassing health, economic and socio-economic, immediate to medium term measures needed to combat the virus and its impact," he added.

The United States saw the highest Covid-19 daily death toll in more than six months Tuesday, with at least 1,707 fatalities, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The coronavirus is now killing at least one American every minute of the day, bringing the country to another horrific milestone on Wednesday: At least 250,029 people in the country have died of Covid-19 since the first death on February 29 in Washington state.
And it's only going to get worse, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at George Washington University School of Medicine.
"The horrible death count that we saw yesterday in the United States ... reflects the number of people who were being infected three weeks ago -- two to three weeks ago, because that's the lag," Reiner said Wednesday.
"On average, two to three weeks ago, we were seeing 70,000 to 80,000 (new) cases per day. Yesterday, there were about 155,000 (new) cases. So if you're alarmed at the 1,700 deaths today, two to three weeks from now, we're going to see 3,000 deaths a day."

Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman announced Tuesday he is participating in a phase 3 trial for the COVID-19 vaccine being developed by American multinational corporation Johnson & Johnson.
Portman said he hopes to help boost public confidence in vaccines as America prepares for a massive inoculation effort against the coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.
“Getting a safe & effective vaccine is the single most important thing we can do to beat #COVID19,” Portman tweeted. “I encourage folks to participate in trials & feel confident in the vaccine once it is authorized by the FDA [Food and Drug Administration].”
Portman signed up as a test subject after receiving a briefing from an Ohio-based firm that is conducting the late-stage trial of the vaccine.
The 64-year-old lawmaker is one of 10,000 volunteers administered a blind dose, which is either the vaccine or a placebo. Portman agreed to monitor his vital signs and keep a daily log of his health.
Portman’s announcement came one day after another company, Moderna, said a phase 3 trial shows its vaccine to be 94.5% effective. Earlier this month, drug maker Pfizer announced results showing 90% efficacy for yet another vaccine. Both companies plan to seek emergency use authorization from the FDA and hope to vaccinate as many as 20 million Americans by the end of the year.
Despite promising trial data, a recent Gallup poll found that half of Americans do not plan to get the shot.