₦airaland Forum

Moderna said Monday its COVID-19 vaccine is proving to be highly effective in a major trial, another dash of hope in the global race to tame the coronavirus.
The company revealed its vaccine appears to be 94.5% effective, according to preliminary data. Last week, Phizer announced its own vaccine is similarly effective.
A vaccine can’t come fast enough, as virus cases topped 11 million in the U.S. over the weekend — 1 million of them recorded in just the past week — and governors and mayors are ratcheting up restrictions ahead of Thanksgiving. The pandemic has killed more than 1.3 million people worldwide, over 245,000 of them in the U.S.
If the FDA allows emergency use of Moderna’s or Pfizer’s candidate, there will be limited, rationed supplies before the end of the year.
Both vaccines require people to get two shots, several weeks apart. U.S. officials said they hope to have about 20 million Moderna doses and another 20 million doses of the vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech to use in late December.
According to the CDC, when a vaccine is authorized or approved in the United States, there may not be enough doses available for all adults. “Supplies will increase over time, and all adults should be able to get vaccinated later in 2021,” the CDC wrote on the official Operation Warp Speed website. “However, a COVID-19 vaccine may not be available for young children until more studies are completed.”
On Sunday,  Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told Business Insider a vaccine will be available to anyone who wants it by the end of May 2021.
“What I believe is that by Memorial Day, in the US, anybody who wants a vaccine will get a safe and efficacious vaccine,” Bancel said on Sunday.
Bancel made the estimate based on production estimates at Moderna and Pfizer.
Once submitted, experts say it should take 10 days for the FDA to review Pfizer’s clinical trial data. This data is not yet available. The data released by Pfizer last week was only “preliminary.”
Pfizer is not expected to receive authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration before the last two weeks of December.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has released its October 2020 edition of the Business Expectation Survey Report – an exercise that was conducted by the Statistics Department of the apex bank.
The survey was conducted online with a sample size of 1,050 businesses nationwide between October 12 and October 16 with a response rate of 89.4%.
The sectors covered include Agric/Services, Manufacturing, Wholesale/retail trade, and Construction, which are made up of small, medium, and large corporations covering both import-oriented and export-oriented businesses.
Some factors were clearly identified to have inhibited business activities in October 2020, such as insufficient power supply, financial problems, high-interest rates, competition, unfavorable economic climate, unclear economic laws, unfavorable political climate, insufficient demand, access to credit, and lack of equipment.
Highlights
The respondents expect the average inflation rate in the next six months and the next twelve months to stand at 13.30% and 13.55% respectively. Though the respondents were not satisfied and raised concerns about how the government is currently tackling the issue of inflation in the country.
The respondent firms expect borrowing rates to rise in the current month, next month, next 2 months, and the next 6 months with indices of 16.2, 13.5, 16.2, and 15.8 index points respectively.
The respondents’ broad outlook on access to credit was negative at -2.1 index points in October 2020.
The respondent firms expect a favorable business outlook for November and December 2020 with indices of 56.2 and 62.7 index points respectively.
Some business sectors shall be employing in November and December as the outlook was considered positive at 19.5 and 22.5 index points respectively.
The breakdown showed that Agric/services sector with 20.8 points has the highest prospects for employment in the next month, followed by the manufacturing sector with an index of 20.5 points, construction (11.4 points), and wholesale/retail trade (10.5 points).
The business sectors with plans to expand in November include the Construction sector with the highest index of 64.7 points, followed closely by Agric/services sector with an index of 49.8 points, wholesale/retail trade sector 46.8 index points, and Manufacturing sector with 42.0 index points.
The business outlook for November 2020, December 2020, and April 2021, looks positive and promising for the respondent firms based on their renewed confidence in the economy, as they were quite pessimistic about the macroeconomic landscape in October 2020.
Please unite everyone and rebuild a hopeful economy from the rubble after the epidemic

The spread of novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) in Nigeria continues to record significant increases as the latest statistics provided by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control reveal Nigeria now has 64,516 confirmed cases.
On the 11th of November 2020, 180 new confirmed cases and 2 deaths were recorded in Nigeria, having carried out a total daily test of 1,567 samples across the country.
The spread of novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) in Nigeria continues to record significant increases as the latest statistics provided by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control reveal Nigeria now has 64,516 confirmed cases.
On the 11th of November 2020, 180 new confirmed cases and 2 deaths were recorded in Nigeria, having carried out a total daily test of 1,567 samples across the country.
To date, 64,516 cases have been confirmed, 60,737 cases have been discharged and 1,162 deaths have been recorded in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. A total of 687,952 tests have been carried out as of November 11th, 2020 compared to 686,385 tests a day earlier.
According to the NCDC, the 180 new cases were reported from 9 states- Lagos (74), Oyo (41), FCT (19), Kaduna (19), Bauchi (12), Ogun (7), Rivers (4), Cross River (2) and Edo (2).
Meanwhile, the latest numbers bring Lagos state total confirmed cases to 22,127, followed by Abuja (6,303), Plateau (3,679), Oyo (3,581), Rivers (2,881), Kaduna (2,725), Edo (2,680), Ogun (2,082), Delta (1,816), Kano (1,756), Ondo (1,700), Enugu (1,332),  Kwara (1,083), Ebonyi (1,055), Katsina (953), Gombe (938). Osun (932), Abia (926),  Borno (745), and Bauchi (739).
Imo State has recorded 622  cases, Benue (493), Nasarawa (483), Bayelsa (414),  Ekiti (338), Jigawa (325), Akwa Ibom (319), Anambra (282), Niger (281), Adamawa (261), Sokoto (165), Taraba (152), Kebbi (93), Cross River (89), Yobe (82), Zamfara (79), while Kogi state has recorded 5 cases only.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has welcomed an announcement by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech that an experimental COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90 percent effective based on initial trial results.
Buhari called for equitable distribution of the vaccine globally upon approval for delivery.
“I welcome the news that a Coronavirus vaccine has recorded 90% effectiveness in clinical trials. This is a major milestone. The world must now make great effort to facilitate equitable access and distribution of these vaccines, to protect people in all countries,” he said.
By Tuesday, Nigeria had reported 64,184 confirmed COVID-19 infections, the seventh-highest tally in Africa. It has also recorded 1,158 deaths from the disease.
Scientists, public health officials and investors have also welcomed the first successful interim data from a large-scale clinical test of the vaccine. However, mass roll-outs, which need regulatory approval, will not happen this year.
Pfizer and German partner BioNTech said they had found no serious safety concerns yet and expected to seek the U.S. emergency use authorization (EUA) later this month, raising the chance of a regulatory decision as soon as December.
If granted, the companies estimate they can roll out up to 50 million doses this year, enough to protect 25 million people, and then produce up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
At present, the global covid-19 infection is very serious, and the death toll has reached millions of people. This is a difficult problem that we need to solve at present. Now we have preliminarily developed an effective vaccine. If the quantity is not enough, we can supply it to countries with serious infection, such as the United States, India and other countries. If we can ensure the average distribution, it is the best.

The number of confirmed cases in the African continent reached 1,827,034 with a death toll of 43,913 as of Thursday afternoon, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.
A total of 1,492,904 people infected with COVID-19 have recovered across the continent so far, according to the continental disease control and prevention agency.
The most COVID-19 affected African countries in terms of the number of positive cases include South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, figures from the Africa CDC show.
The southern Africa region is the most COVID-19 affected region both in terms of the number of confirmed positive cases as well as the number of deaths, it was noted.
The northern Africa region is the second most COVID-19-affected African region, according to the Africa CDC.

The United States recorded more than 100,000 new coronavirus infections in a single day for the first time on Wednesday as the nation waited to learn the results of a presidential election carried out in the shadow of a pandemic.
The election had a dystopian feel even before infections reached record levels. On Tuesday, voters in goggles and face shields handed ballots to poll workers clad in hazmat suits or sealed behind layers of plexiglass. On Wednesday, President Trump threatened lawsuits as election officials in battleground states labored to count an extraordinary number of mail ballots.
Despite the pandemic’s omnipresent specter, exit polls showed that voters were more concerned about the state of the economy than public health, according to data collected by Edison Research and reviewed by The Post.
About 4 in 10 voters said they would prioritize the economy over efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Around one-third of voters said they were primarily motivated by the economy — a sentiment that was particularly widespread among Trump supporters, of whom 6 in 10 cited the economy as their top priority.
Health officials nationwide attempted to capture the attention of a distracted nation, warning that the steady increase of infections that began in mid-September is not slowing down, amid lingering uncertainty over potential vaccines.
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, urged Americans “to do the right thing” and wear a mask in public to protect themselves and stop the spread of the virus as the country heads into the winter and flu season.