The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) said recent complaints by travellers to Nigeria over their inability to obtain QR Codes and acknowledgement of COVID-19 test results were due to system failure.
The Director-General, NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Thursday in Abuja.
NAN reports that passengers have expressed frustration over their inability to access the portal, costs of the test on arrival and other challenges.
Taking to Twitter, some passengers highlighted that they had been unable to complete the payment online and, therefore, were unable to board their aircraft.
Ihekweazu said, “On April 20, a system failure by one of the partner organisations supporting the management of the COVID-19 travel portal led to an unforeseen downtime.”
The NCDC boss said the technical failure was resolved after about 12 hours.
“We accept full responsibility for this event, which led to inconvenience for several travellers to Nigeria.
“We have learnt from this occurrence and continue to restructure our systems to avoid future events like this and serve Nigerians better.
“Our commitment remains to protect the health of Nigerians, by reducing the risk of spread of the virus. This is why the Nigerian International Travel Portal was introduced by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19,” he explained.
He assured that the agency would continue to strengthen this process to make it seamless for all travellers.
The NCDC boss said the Federal Government could not regulate the cost for the COVID-19 test in private laboratories.
“As the country’s response to COVID-19, the public health laboratories will continue to provide testing free-of-charge for public health needs.
“Nigerians should note that testing is still free in public health laboratories, while testing for personal reasons such as travel purposes are required to be done in private laboratories, which is what travellers are paying for,” he explained.
Ihekweazu said the Federal Government had also insisted on a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), test for international passengers, to prevent overwhelming the nation’s health infrastructure.
“So please bear with us, it’s a small price to pay for the future and the health of the country and its people and we encourage you to keep carrying out departure test.
“All travellers arriving in Nigeria must have tested negative for COVID-19 by PCR in the country of departure pre-boarding.
”The PCR test must be done within 96 hours before departure and preferably within 72 hours,” he said.
He, however, noted that passengers were required to remain in self-isolation on arrival and carry out a COVID-19 test in a designated private laboratory seven days after arrival.
“This entire process must be registered on the Nigeria International Travel Portal- www.nitp.ncdc.gov.ng,” said Ihekweazu.
He added that one of the key components of Nigeria’s response to the pandemic was testing.
“The capacity for testing has increased in the country, since the outbreak began, from four laboratories to 129 functional laboratories. Of these, 48 are private laboratories and eight are corporate laboratories.
“Each state and the FCT have several sample collection sites with at least one molecular laboratory to test.
“Samples are tested daily to ensure results are communicated to the clients, patients and/or managing team for optimum care,“ he explained.
The NCDC boss stressed that it was, therefore, important that Nigerians utilise these resources to the spread of COVID-19.

t least 26 persons including 19 children have been rescued from trafficking during a law enforcement operation in Nigeria’s southern state of Edo, authorities said on Tuesday.
In a statement, Kontongs Bello, a police spokesperson in Edo, said the victims comprise 19 children, one teenager and six women who were trafficked from the southeast states of Ebonyi, Imo, Abia, Anambra and Akwa Ibom.
He said they were heading toward Evbuotubu in Ekenwan road axis of Benin city before rescue came their way.
According to the police spokesman, the women were lured from their various home states by a woman named “Jennifer”, noting that the suspect is now on the run.
“They were lured in a guise that Edo state government is giving financial support to single mothers with newborn babies especially twins,” he said.
“The women said they were forced to go for street begging for their mistress Jennifer. They further stated that only peanut is given to them to take care of their children,” he said.

Otters at an aquarium in Atlanta have tested positive for Covid-19 but are expected to make full recoveries.
"They began exhibiting mild respiratory symptoms such as sneezing, runny noses, mild lethargy, and some began coughing," the Georgia Aquarium said in a statement.
The aquarium said the Asian small-clawed otters are doing well.
"Despite following all recommended health and safety protocols, it is suspected the otters may have acquired the infection from an asymptomatic staff member," the aquarium said in the statement, which was posted to Facebook.
Such transmission is rare, and the otters are off exhibit while they recover. The animals do not have direct contact with patrons.
The aquarium did not say how many otters tested positive. Animals, including otters, are not eligible for the Covid-19 vaccines.

Nigeria’s minister of information Lai Mohammed, says Twitter chose Ghana as the headquarters for its African operations, due to the ‘unpatriotism’ of Nigerians.
Speaking to journalists on Thursday, in Abuja, Mohammed said the tech giants chose Accra over Nigeria because the nation’s West African neighbours are champions of democracy and abide by the rule of law.
“The reasons cited by Twitter for citing the headquarters in Accra, Ghana is that Accra is a champion of democracy and there is rule of law in the country, among other reasons.
This is what you get when you de-market your country,” the minister stated.
He further blamed the media for championing the course of devaluing Nigeria by fervently putting out negative reports and painting the country as a hell on earth.
“The media is more to blame for this which most times exaggerate the challenges in the country.
At no time was this worse than during the #EndSARS protest when Nigerian journalists both traditional and new media were trying to outdo themselves in painting Nigeria as a hell where nobody should live.
When they all conspired to vilify not just the government but the people of Nigeria. We are not saying that you should not criticize the country but be fair and patriotic. When you destroy your own house, where are you going to live?
You can imagine the kind of job opportunities that citing that headquarters in Nigeria would have generated, the kind of visibility it would have given Nigeria but we destroyed it. It is what the insiders say about their country that the outsider will use to judge and condemn the country.” Lai Lamented.
The minister argued that the natural expectation is that Nigeria with a 25 million Twitter user population should have been the hub of twitter business in Africa, as against ghana with only eight million Twitter users.
He urged Nigerians to be more patriotic, stressing that the continuous push to put the nation in a bad light has now cost a great opportunity that would have benefitted the youths and the nation at large.
Twitter officially announced its decision to base its African headquarters in Ghana. The social media company is already looking to fill 12 positions in the West African country but will hold off on opening a physical office until the Covid-19 pandemic subsides.
While making the announcement, Twitter described Ghana as “a champion for democracy” and “a supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet”.

There are growing concerns about the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine efficacy against coronavirus and its side effects.US health agencies Tuesday recommended an immediate pause in the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, according to a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) statement released Tuesday.
“Until that process is complete, we are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, and Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said in the joint statement.
The FDA said six vaccine recipients developed rare blood clots within about two weeks of being inoculated.
The recommendation, made in tandem with US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), means that federal vaccine distribution channels, including mass vaccination sites, will pause the use of the single-shot vaccine.
This is coming after the Nigerian government has quietly ditched the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and gradually shifted to Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine, saying it is easier to administer.
Nigerian Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) in March said Nigeria intended to begin rolling out the J&J vaccine to almost 30 million people as soon as it can obtain the vaccine supplies.
“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to get up to 70 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson this year. This is yet to be finalised but these are some of the advanced conversations that are going on between Nigeria and the African Union,” he said during an interview in the capital, Abuja,” said NPHCDA boss Faisal Shuaib
Nigeria previously said it had applied for 41 million doses of vaccines through the AU, comprising of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson shots. But Shuaib said the proportion of AstraZenca doses was likely to be reduced by the delays.
“Some of the allocations that we were supposed to get for the AstraZeneca will be replaced by the Johnson and Johnson.”
Nigeria’s reduction in its demand for AstraZeneca comes amidst growing global concerns about AstraZeneca’s efficacy against the SARS-CoV2 virus variant first identified in South Africa, as well as safety concerns that led to the suspension of AstraZeneca in many countries including Germany, Denmark, Iceland, and South Africa.
Nigeria had already commenced the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with vaccines supplied by the WHO co-sponsored COVAX initiative.
Shuaib said there was no evidence of adverse side effects in Nigeria and that the AstraZeneca vaccine would continue to be used for eligible people aged 18 and above.

The World Health Organisation has asked Nigeria and some other African countries to expect delays in the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines.
The WHO Africa Regional Director, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, said this during a press conference with select journalists on Thursday.
She, however, said Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Comoros should still expect their shipments.
Sunday PUNCH had reported last week that the Federal Government had asked all states administering COVID-19 vaccines to stop immediately they have exhausted half of the dosage given to them.
The move, it was learnt, had become necessary due to a shortage of the AstraZeneca vaccine on the international market caused by a surge in the demand for the vaccine including in India which is experiencing a second wave of COVID-19.
Some states like Bauchi, Benue and Ogun had already complied with the directive.
Speaking at the press conference, the WHO regional director said Africa had been affected by the happenings in India.
She said attempts were being made to find alternatives but this would not happen overnight
Moeti said, “Delays in COVAX shipments are expected to continue this month unfortunately as India is fighting a severe second wave of COVID-19 and has temporarily banned vaccine exports. Despite supply challenges, we are expecting COVAX deliveries in the coming weeks in Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Comoros.
“Countries affected by the delays have received WHO guidance to optimise the national deployment of the available doses. Manufacturers along with WHO, Africa CDC, African countries, development partners and the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative are working hard to sustainably scale-up vaccine production, but we recognise that this cannot be achieved overnight.”
Moeti said short-term solutions that prioritise vaccine equity were needed and that Africa was already playing COVID-19 vaccination catch-up.
“While we acknowledge the immense burden placed by the global demand for vaccines, inequity can only worsen scarcity,” the WHO director said.
According to the WHO, about 100 days into the year, of more than 600 million vaccine doses distributed globally, Africa has administered only two per cent.
A chart posted by WHO showed that Nigeria has the third highest number of vaccinated persons in Africa after Morocco and Kenya. Others in the top 10 include: Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Senegal, Angola, Rwanda and Seychelles.

Meanwhile, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control says it has received the dossiers for Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and the Russian Sputnik V vaccines.
This is the first step to approving the vaccines for use in Nigeria.
The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof Moji Adeyeye, said this in response to an inquiry by Sunday PUNCH.
Adeyeye said, “We have three other dossiers that we are working on now. These are Sputnik V, J&J and Pfizer-BioNTech. We will be announcing our decisions as soon as we finish the review of each dossier.”
A registration dossier of a pharmaceutical product is a document that contains all the technical data (administrative, quality, nonclinical and clinical) of a product to be approved, registered and marketed in a country.
It consists of data proving that the drug has quality, efficacy and safety properties suitable for the intended use, additional administrative documents, samples of finished product or related substances and reagents necessary to perform analyses of finished product.

A public health expert has said that the family, as a unit of the society, is facing an “unprecedented threat” in Nigeria.
Jessica Charles, a public health practitioner, in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, said the extended family system, for instance, was “gradually going into extinction in some parts of Nigeria”.
Ms Charles is the Executive Director, Save the Family Foundation, a non-profit organisation that focuses on public health, gender-based violence, and family issues.
“In the good old days, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and other relatives were some sort of available and willing help for individuals who were struggling to survive, people who desperately needed shelter, medical assistance, school fees or financial assistance to start a small business.
“They were the shoulder for young people to lean on in troubling times. They served as mentor and positive influencers,” Ms Charles said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES, Thursday.
“There are many Nigerians today with great and inspiring stories of how they were able to scale through life hurdles to become successful in different fields of endeavour because of the help they received from extended family members.”
She said the situation has so deteriorated and that it was even more worrisome that people and institutions appeared not bothered about it.
“The extended family has either been extinct in some communities in Nigeria or it is at the verge of collapsing.
“Young people no longer see nor connect, let alone bond with their uncles, aunts, cousins or nephews. Even the nuclear family that consist of father, mother, and children is also facing some serious socio-economic threats in our country.”

Maryland will receive fewer doses of Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine than expected this week — but the drop won’t affect scheduled appointments, Gov. Larry Hogan said Wednesday.
Hogan (R) said during a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency-run vaccination site in Greenbelt on Wednesday that his administration got some “very concerning news” from the White House on Tuesday night that the number of Johnson & Johnson doses states receive will be cut this week.

That means Maryland will receive about 80,000 fewer Johnson & Johnson doses this week, he said. But he added that because of the FEMA site and slight increases in Pfizer and Moderna allocations, they will be able to keep all scheduled appointments.

Countries have tried to obtain COVID-19 vaccines from people of color with limited success rates, and these people have been killed and hospitalized in large numbers because of the disease.
Beginning Thursday, Vermont has clearly given priority to black adults and people from other minorities to vaccinate. Vermont is close behind Montana. Montana announced in January that it would allow Native Americans and other people of color to be vaccinated because they have a higher risk of COVID-19 complications.

While there’s worry over whether Covid-19 cases are on the verge of another surge, vaccinations are rising, and Americans are flying in greater numbers than they have in a year. But not every country is welcoming U.S. citizens.
NBC News is tracking travel restrictions in countries around the world. Here is what travelers need to know, as of Monday, March 29:
More than 70 countries, including Brazil, Haiti, Ireland and Egypt, are fully open to U.S. travelers and tourists.
Sixteen countries are completely closed to Americans, including France, Belgium, Iraq, Libya and New Zealand.
The remaining countries fall somewhere in between, with some offering exceptions for dual-citizens, residents or those with qualifying travel reasons.
More than 150 countries require a negative Covid-19 test from travelers.
More than 100 countries have some sort of quarantine requirement.
More than 60 countries have some sort of curfew in effect.
See the map below for each country’s travel details. This map will be updated in the weeks ahead as circumstances change.

About 26 days after Nigeria commenced vaccination of its citizens against the COVID-19 virus, over 700,000 people have received the first dose of the vaccine.
As of Wednesday evening, 718,412 eligible Nigerians have been vaccinated, according to an update by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).
Nigeria commenced COVID-19 vaccination in early March, having received 3.94 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine through the COVAX facility.
The vaccination started with healthcare workers who are often at the risk of exposure to infections being the first responders to patients.
The country recently received another 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines from telecom giant, MTN, as part of the latter’s contribution to Africa.
COVID-19 vaccination has since commenced in all states across the country except for Kogi which is yet to receive doses for the vaccines.
Kogi, which has reported only five cases since the onset of the pandemic, was not supplied with doses of the vaccines.
“This is because their cold store is still under repairs following vandalisation during the EndSARS protest,” the NPHCDA head Faisal Shuaib, said at a briefing.
The agency in a tweet on Monday said Mr Shuaib met with Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello, to resolve issues around vaccine storage and provision of security at the Cold Store.
According to the Wednesday update, Lagos, the epicentre of the disease in Nigeria, has vaccinated 136,356 people; making it the highest in the country.
This is followed by Ogun with 50,870, Kaduna- 46,474, Katsina- 37,819, Bauchi- 33,368 and Kano- 33,258.
The states with the lowest number of vaccinated people are Abia- 697 and Taraba with 1,568 people vaccinated so far

President Joe Biden and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged the toll the pandemic has taken on Latino businesses and workers and reassured them Tuesday that they are getting help to bounce back and would be key in leading the latest economic recovery.
"I know how hard it's been the last two years. It isn't easy to hang a closed sign on a dream or a family legacy that you poured your heart into building," Biden said to the virtual U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's legislative summit.
Biden and Yellen said Latinos would be helped by the first pandemic relief package passed under the administration, the American Rescue Plan.
Biden pointed to some of the assistance, including emergency support for rehiring employees, a Small Business Opportunity Fund, grants for "mom-and-pop restaurants, food trucks and food stands" and community navigators to connect small businesses with programs for people without bankers.
"We know Latinos historically face discrimination when it comes to securing support for their businesses," Biden said.
"We have a lot of work ahead, but together we are going to get our economy on track and hang an open sign on tens of thousands of Latino small businesses once again," he added.
Building support among Latino business owners is critical for Democrats who often face strong competition from Republicans for the constituency.
Yellen said the disproportionate hit on Latinos won't be as long-lasting as other economic recessions and Latinos would drive the recovery.
"Hispanic entrepreneurs can lead us out of a crisis again," she said. "I know Hispanic workers can power our recovery, potentially in an even bigger way than a decade ago, so long as we remove the long-standing barriers that have been in your way."
Yellen said Latinos were disproportionately hit in four previous economic recessions: stagflation in the '70s, the recession of the early '80s, the first dot-com bubble and the Great Recession in the 2000s.
The crisis is one that if someone designed an economic crisis to unduly harm the Hispanic community, "they would probably come up with something that looks like Covid-19," Yellen said.
"At the end of the day, it will probably still be true that the pandemic economy followed the historic trend and hit the Hispanic community harder than many other groups," she said.
But she said she believes people will be ready to bounce back and be back in full employment by next year.

The Federal Ministry of Health has informed Chief Medical Directors and Medical Directors of federal tertiary health institutions across the country to be on the watch out for fake COVID-19 vaccines already in circulation in Africa. 
In a memo, “Report of fake COVID-19 Vaccines destined for Africa arrested in China” dated March 26, 2021 by the Director, Hospital Services in the ministry, Dr Adebimpe Adebiyi, the ministry said it is in receipt of a letter from the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-l9, regarding the arrest of about 3,000 doses of fake COVlD-19 vaccines, which were Africa-bound from China. 
Adebiyi, who disclosed that the report further indicates that the fake COVID-19 vaccines are already in circulation in Africa, informed the heads of federal health institutions that to prevent the importation of fake vaccines, the Nigeria Customs Service has designated Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport as the only Point of Entry (POE) for imported COVID-19 vaccines. 

She said: “I am, therefore, to bring this to your notice and dispel any possibility of COVID-19 vaccines being available for sale or administered by any unauthorised institution. Please accept the assurances of my best regards”. 
When contacted, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Abdulaziz Mashi Abdullahi, who confirmed the authenticity of the memo, told The Guardian that the office of the Secretary of the Government of the Federation (SGF) has a department which deals with intelligence services, adding that the ministry last month received a report of the fake COVID-19 vaccines from the SGF’s office. 
He explained that the essence of the memo was to alert all Chief Medical Directors and Medical Directors, whose facilities are being used for the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination to be on the watch out, considering that vaccine procurement is presently on multilateral basis, government to government. 
Abdullahi observed that there is no private sector involvement in vaccine procurement for now, and part of the reason for this was to forestall importation of fake vaccines into the country. 

Ensure the safety of vaccines and control the import of vaccines, so as to ensure the safety of vaccination.

WASHINGTON — Customs and Border Protection is not testing migrant children packed into overcrowded border stations for Covid-19, Biden administration officials said on Thursday, though more than 100 have tested positive after being transferred from those facilities.
"We are not performing testing inside Border Patrol facilities," an administration official told reporters on a press call.
The official said children are tested when they are transferred to sites run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Department of Health and Human Services.
In a Carrizo Springs, Texas, HHS facility currently housing 766 children, 108 have tested positive for Covid-19. All came from Border Patrol stations and it is not known if they contracted or spread the virus there.

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Confused and hungry, Central American families who chanced the U.S. border at South Texas continue being expelled to Mexico once flown 800 miles west to El Paso.
Many say they were lied to by smugglers who told them the United States had changed its laws and would let them in if they had children. Others say they were told by U.S. officials they were being flown to the interior of the country but instead found themselves in a different part of the border and, within hours, in Mexico.
“We came because we had the need to work. We need help for our children,” said a young father from Guatemala as he and his family walked from El Paso to Juarez, Mexico. “They lied to us. They told us they would take us north. They never told us they would send us back.”
Despite seemingly widespread confusion in Latin America, U.S. federal officials say the U.S. border remains closed to new unauthorized migrants. Individuals and families crossing the border are subject to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Title 42 order to prevent cross-border spread of COVID-19 and sent back to Mexico as soon as possible.
Unaccompanied migrant children are being referred to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities usually within 72 hours of entry. Some families in South Texas are reportedly being released to the interior of the United States, though it remains unclear how many and why.
Also, in late 2018 and early 2019, some 72,000 migrants who alleged persecution and insecurity in their home countries petitioned for asylum and are now being phased out of a program (MPP) that forced them to wait in Mexico. In El Paso, 100 a day are being admitted and sent to a private nonprofit shelter.
But new would-be refugees and economic migrants are being subjected to Title 42 even if they come with small children.
“We just want to work, we don’t want to stay,” said a mother from Guatemala expelled to Juarez via the Paso del Norte International Bridge. “They lent us money to go over there (the United States). Now we have that debt. … We barely make enough money to eat (in Guatemala). All we want is to work, not to live (in the U.S.). We don’t want to stay to live forever over there (the U.S.). All we want is to give our children a better future.”
The woman said she is so poor that she couldn’t afford to send her son to school. She said she was told to get on the airplane to fly her to the interior of the United States. Instead, she wound up in El Paso and now in Mexico. “They should have told us” that wasn’t the case, she said.
Santos, a man from Honduras who crossed into the U.S. south of McAllen, Texas, last week, said the smugglers lied to him.
“They said they had (changed) the law, and then this happened,” Santos said as he sought help at Juarez’s Migrant Assistance Center. Asked if he would try to cross the border again, he hesitated to answer. “It’s difficult to attempt it. I don’t have any money. I have nothing.” He said he’d likely go back to Honduras.
U.S. authorities are sending groups of between 30 to 40 migrants back to Juarez every day; sometimes as many as 80, said Enrique Valenzuela, the head of a Chihuahua state agency that oversees the Migrant Assistance Center.
“Some of them say they arrived (to El Paso) in a flight and they were sent here across the border. Our job is to provide attention to them and keep them out of harms way. We know they are vulnerable because they are in a place they don’t know,” Valenzuela said.
He said migrant families are given a “small meal,” then routed to shelters in Juarez where they can decide what to do next. “Some of them ultimately decide to go back to their home countries, and this happens in some cases, of course,” he said.

Both the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency have insisted that the vaccine is safe.
The flurry of suspensions by some countries, mainly in Europe, of the AstraZeneca vaccine following reports that a small number of people had developed blood clots after receiving the jabs has drawn a debate among health experts in Nigeria.
It has been over two weeks since Africa's most populous nation received almost 4 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines. In Lagos, Nigeria's largest city and most affected by the disease, authorities said over 12,000 people have been vaccinated 48 hours after the state commenced vaccination.
While Nigeria's first phase of vaccination is mainly for health workers and other frontline groups, the news that there were side effects among a few people receiving the Oxford jabs in other countries is further escalating the already existing scepticism about the vaccines.
Flurry of suspensions
Austria was the first country to commence an investigation of potential blood clots caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Blood clots are solid clumps that form inside the blood. It can be life-threatening if not treated quickly.
Authorities in Austria said they halted the vaccine rollout while investigating the death of one person and the illness of another after taking the shots, according to Reuters.
In a swift move, at least 15 other countries such as Norway, Thailand, Iceland, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, DRC Congo, Denmark and Ireland, and some of Europe's largest economies, Germany, France and Italy, said they were halting the use of the vaccine or some particular batches of it. Some, like Germany and France, have since reversed the suspension of the vaccines.
The suspensions were mostly precautionary as many countries that halted inoculation could not provide concrete evidence of the vaccine causing the effects.
Both the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency have insisted that the shot is safe and that countries should continue using it.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, also defended its vaccine strongly, stating that there is no link to increased risk of fatal brain haemorrhages and blood clots.
"Around 17 million people in the EU and UK have now received our vaccine, and the number of cases of blood clots reported in this group is lower than the hundreds of cases that would be expected among the general population", Ann Taylor, Oxford/AstraZeneca's chief medical officer, said in a statement.
Amid the safety concerns, some high-income countries like the UK and developing countries such as Nigeria and Ghana have chosen to continue the rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Health experts weigh in
While the Nigerian government has repeatedly expressed confidence in the Oxford vaccine, assuring of its safety, health experts that spoke to PREMIUM TIMES shared divergent opinions on concerns raised about the vaccines.
Former chairman of the Nigerian Medical Association, Mike Ogirima, said the move to suspend the rollout of the vaccines by many countries is precautionary "with no objective evidence".
"WHO has come out to denounce the side effects alluded to Astrazeneca vaccine. Now, we need as a sovereign nation to conduct an evaluation on the recipients of the vaccine locally to ascertain the untoward effects of the vaccine", the medical doctor said.
"I have not heard of any adverse reactions from Nigerians that have received the vaccines. I am prepared to receive it," he said.
Henry Ewononu, a public health advocate, said the suspensions and blood clot concerns are causing anxiety. He, however, said there should be no cause for panic yet as no side effect has been identified in Nigeria.
"Over 70 million have received the vaccines, and 30 or so reported issues with blood clots", he said.
"I agree that blood clotting disorders can be frightening enough, but let's now start advising patients on symptoms to look out for while allowing science resolve this in a standard way."
Officials at the vaccination sites should make available hotlines for reporting adverse reactions and trained officials promptly advise patients on what to do, he said.
The medical doctor said the health community has a role to play in bridging the knowledge gap about COVID-19 vaccines.
"Medical and Health officials should not allow the vacuum where the people will now depend on whoever is not qualified to lead in medical advisories to guide the people.
"On this note, I call on the professional associations in the health sector to form a coalition to penetrate the community and saturate it with wholesome information and serve as a bridge between the people and government to assuage their concerning anxieties," he said.
Promise Akubo, a public health research expert, gave a different view. He said the governments suspending the vaccines are showing how concerned they are about their people.
"There's need for monitoring and control in every scientific process, which administration of the vaccine is.
"Government and all the stakeholders in the management of COVID-19 cases should by now be on their toes. Vaccine rollout shouldn't be hurriedly carried out. It is important necessary evaluation is done so that people are not exposed to side effects with grievous health implications," he explained.
For Confidence MacHarry, security and health data analyst with SBM Intelligence, the ripple effect of the rising concerns about the jabs are that it is playing into the hands of vaccine sceptics.
"That's for sure. There would be increased resistance to vaccine efforts," he said.
Nnimmo Bassey, an environmentalist, expressed worry over the development. He however pointed to a bigger problem.
"All these events point to the fact that we need to rebuild our healthcare delivery system. We ought to be in the best place to make our own medicines, including vaccines. And we should be vocal in the struggle to have patent-free and accessible vaccines and other drugs needed for a pandemic of this nature.
"It is time for the nation to wake up. Platitudes and wringing of hands won't do. More pandemics will happen with the rate of ecological damage going on in the world. Our own environment has been so bastardized and rendered us extremely vulnerable to diseases.
"It is as though we have forgotten the dictum that cleanliness is next to godliness. For a highly religious nation, environmental care should be a topmost priority," Mr Bassey explained.
AstraZeneca vaccines
The AstraZeneca vaccine is important, especially to the COVAX arrangement, the UN-backed effort that promises access to vaccines for up to 20 per cent of participating countries' population.
It was through its subscription to the arrangement that Nigeria received 3.94 million doses of the vaccine out of the overall expected 16 million.
Because it is relatively cheap, easy to make, and store, the AstraZeneca vaccine is regarded as the most suitable for developing countries like Nigeria.

On Friday, the country administered its 100 millionth Covid-19 vaccine dose since President Joe Biden took office, a sign of increased supply from vaccine manufacturers and increased efficiency from state and local health departments.
The rapid pace has been helped by the arrival of a third vaccine, the one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, which drastically upped the country's supply in March, and by states moving to increase the number of people eligible for the vaccination.
The daily injection numbers show how the rate of vaccinations has accelerated since the New Year. In the 37 days from the county's first vaccine administrations to Biden's inauguration, 16.5 million doses were administered, according to data collected by NBC News and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Over the following 37 days, the country administered 50 million doses — more than three times as many shots in the same span. The next 50 million shots were quicker, coming in 22 days.
In January, after setting his first milestone of 100 million total vaccinations in his first 100 days, Biden put targets on 1.5 million shots per day and 150 million total vaccinations.
The country is well ahead of the first metric, as 2.5 million shots are currently being administered per day, on average. The country is ahead of pace for the second target, and the pace could increase even further, as the Biden administration has set up a number of mass-vaccination sites around the country and expanded the pool of individuals eligible to administer the vaccine to include dentists, veterinarians and other health care professionals.

The U.S. could begin vaccinating older kids against Covid-19 this fall while elementary-aged children may start getting their shots early next year, White House Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers on Wednesday.
“For high school students, it looks like they will be available to get vaccinated in the beginning of the fall, very likely for the fall term,” Fauci told lawmakers during a hearing with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Fauci said researchers will likely have enough data on immunizations for younger children — 12 and under — to begin giving them shots in the first quarter of 2022.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccines from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s for people ages 18 and older, while Pfizer’s vaccine can be used in people as young as 16.
Drugmakers are quickly testing their coronavirus vaccines in children to determine whether they’re safe and effective. Both Pfizer and Moderna started testing their vaccines in adolescents late last year.
Moderna on Tuesday said it’s started dosing younger children in a mid- to-late stage study to determine whether its vaccine, mRNA-1273, can be used to immunize children between six months up to 12-years old. The study, which will enroll about 6,750 children in the United States and Canada, will test the company’s two-dose vaccine given 28 days apart.
However, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in January that he doesn’t expect the data from kids younger than 12 to be ready before 2022, though he anticipates more information on the vaccines’ performance among those 12 and older before September.
“I don’t think the trials will take long at all,” Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA Vaccines Advisory Committee told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” on Tuesday.
“I think it’s very likely for children over 12 that we could have vaccines for them by the summer, and for children who are younger, it’s possible we could have it by the end of this year, beginning of next year,” Offit said.
Pfizer has fully enrolled children in a study testing its vaccine in children ages 12 to 15. The company plans to initiate a trial in the first half of 2021 for children between the ages of 5 and 11, depending on the findings from the first cohort, Pfizer spokesperson Keanna Ghazvini told CNBC in an email Wednesday.
The development and growth of a country requires the efforts of generations. Children are the future of a country. Therefore, every country pays very high attention to children. At the same time, the health of children is also very fragile. Every country should develop a vaccine suitable for children as soon as possible, so as not to delay children's healthy life.

Ilan Shapiro, a physician working in COVID-ravaged areas of Los Angeles and Orange County, where Latinos face high rates of infection, hospitalization and death, says he waited 13 months for life-saving vaccines only to be thwarted by Spanish-language viral misinformation spreading on social media.
Knocking down false rumors, conspiracy theories and misleading news reports that play on vaccine fears has become a routine and necessary part of treating patients.
Shapiro is fighting back with a Spanish-speaking digital campaign, #VacunateYa, that taps health-care professionals and “promotoras” – community members trained to deliver health information – to dispel myths with medical facts.
But he says it's nearly impossible to keep up with all the falsehoods shared by friends, relatives, even celebrities, on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube and in private messaging apps like WhatsApp.
Surging misinformation, he says, is contributing to low vaccination rates among a vulnerable population whose health and finances have already been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic.  
“We can have all the vaccines in the world here in the U.S., but, if they don’t go in the shoulder, all of our efforts are meaningless,” Shapiro said.
Research shows that health and vaccine-related falsehoods and conspiracy theories are one of the most pervasive forms of misinformation targeting Hispanic communities.
Watchdog groups call it the Spanish-language misinformation gap. They say social media companies have been far less likely to flag misinformation in Spanish, including debunked claims of election fraud and vaccine falsehoods.
They blame lax enforcement, errors in translation such as misinterpreting slang, dialects and context and poor fact-checking of Spanish-language news sites.
An analysis last year by human rights nonprofit Avaaz found that Facebook did not put warning labels on 70% of Spanish-language misinformation versus 29% of misinformation in English.
“Facebook continues to ignore our concerns and is making one thing perfectly clear: the safety and dignity of the Latinx community is not their priority,” said Brenda Victoria Castillo, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. 
On Tuesday Hispanic advocacy organizations launched a “Ya Basta, Facebook” (“Stop it, Facebook”) campaign, calling on Facebook to devote more resources to Spanish-language moderation.
In a statement, Facebook said it shares the organizations' goal of stopping Spanish-language misinformation on its apps.

Bauchi State Governor, Senator Bala Mohammed yesterday noted that the allocation of 150 thousand doses of the vaccine to the state by the federal government was not adequate and sufficient.
Mohammed, therefore, pleaded with the federal government to purchase the required doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in order to meet the number of Nigerians.
He appealed to the federal government yesterday after receiving the vaccine at the Government House in Bauchi alongside his wife, Aisha Bala Mohammed and the Deputy Governor, Senator Baba Tela.
Also, the Head of Civil Service, Alhaji Aliyu Jibo; the Chief of Staff to the Governor, Ladan Salihu and the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, among others, also received the vaccine yesterday.
After taking the jab, Mohammed described the allocation of 150 thousand doses of the vaccine to Bauchi state as inadequate, and pleaded with the federal government to purchase the required doses of COVID-19 vaccine in order to meet the number of Nigerians.
He said: "I am highly delighted to witness today's moment which is a climax for the fight against the scourge of COVID-19. You know incidentally I was the index case with my brother the Deputy Governor and some of my close associates and today we are here again after the global body developed a vaccine to tackle the scourge of COVID-19."
"We came here as leaders to be administered with this vaccine to show that the vaccine is safe and I want to tell our people that they should continue wearing face masks even after receiving the vaccine to ensure total eradication of the virus."
Mohammed, however, expressed optimism that the vaccine would contribute positively to controlling the scourge of the deadly virus.
Mohammed, who also received a certificate of vaccination, urged citizens of the state to disregard misinformation about the vaccine, saying the Federal and Bauchi State Governments had done their homework to establish the vaccine's efficacy and safety.
He, however, said that vaccination "is not the end of the pandemic and all citizens must continue to adhere to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as hand hygiene, use of face masks and maintaining physical distance if the pandemic is to be controlled.
"The vaccine is safe because it has been tested. We don't envisage any side effects. So, nobody should panic. It is for our benefit. I also urge you to dispel any speculation regarding the vaccines as you can see we are the first partakers and if we can take the vaccine, you too should not be afraid."
The governor expressed satisfaction with the participation of Islamic clerics and pastors in the flag off ceremony, enjoining them to sensitize their followers on the need to embrace the exercise.
Mohammed, while thanking development partners and the international community especially WHO and other stakeholders who donated the vaccine to Nigeria, called for more collaboration and support for controlling communicable diseases in the country.
He also commended the Bauchi State Task Force on COVID-19 headed by the deputy governor for its commitment to assigned responsibilities and urged them not to relent in providing solutions to all the challenges associated with the infection of the virus.
He used the opportunity to acknowledge the partnership between his administration and the Bauchi field office of UNICEF, which resulted in the renovation of a large number of primary healthcare centres across the state aimed at improving healthcare services.
Also after receiving the vaccine, the deputy governor, who is the Chairman of COVID-19 Task Force in the state, said the vaccine would be available in all the twenty local government areas of the state for people to access it.

With COVID-19 vaccines having strict timelines for when they must be used before expiring, including some that must be used within hours of being mixed and thawed, having leftover doses may be somewhat inevitable.
So what happens in those cases? Who receives the doses and how do people find out where leftover shots are available?
Although there's no nation-wide data tracking wasted vaccine doses, it's likely that only a small fraction of distributed vaccine doses must be thrown away.
Still, this small fraction may amount to many thousands of doses -- and advocates say that it's crucial, in a time of limited supply and facing the specter of spreading variants, to get as many shots in arms as soon as possible.
According to a North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) report obtained by ABC station WTVD, 2,346 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were marked unusable and thrown out in North Carolina.
And Texas issued a report on March 5 indicating that some 6,800 doses had been discarded out of 7.6 million -- about 0.09%. The state has administered some 6.7 million doses overall, according to its vaccination dashboard. Doses were discarded for a number of reasons, including that their expiration date had passed or inadequate refrigeration.
Some doses are wasted because of human error in mixing, preparation or transportation. But many doses are discarded when people don't show up to vaccine appointments, leaving extra shots on hand with a quickly dwindling expiration date.
Now, some local communities are crowdsourcing solutions. Some of those solutions are low-tech, like putting up a flyer at a grocery store notifying shoppers of extra vaccine doses.
Still, others rely on social media and the internet to give local residents a heads up about extra doses that would otherwise go to waste. Among those high-tech solutions are websites like Dr. B, VaccineHunter, and countless Facebook groups that have cropped up since the start of the vaccine rollout.

With the onset of the currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic last spring, many issues in healthcare across the world had to take a back seat. The novel virus took the forefront of treatment and the attention of those who give it.
With an estimated 150,000 new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in 2019 among children <15 years old and 170,000 among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19, HIV testing and diagnosis remains a key issue in mitigating the public health issue.
A recent study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development, sought to describe the impact that COVID-19 has had on HIV testing and diagnosis in children and adolescents in the past year. The data was presented during the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) 2021 virtual sessions.
The study analyzed US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (MER) data from 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
They compared the number of children between the ages of 1 and 14 and the number of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 who received an HIV test and were diagnosed as HIV-positive before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. They then calculated the percent change for the two indicators in the two time periods.
Findings from the study showed that overall pediatric HIV testing declined by 40% and diagnoses declined by 29% across the 14 countries that were studied. Testing and diagnoses also declined for older adolescents by 28% and 29%, respectively. However, some countries did have an increase in testing and diagnoses including Cameroon, Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire.
“Pediatric and adolescent HIV testing and diagnoses dramatically declined in many sub-Saharan African countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries – like Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria – that maintained or increased index testing during COVID-19 had the lowest declines in case finding,” the authors wrote. “To mitigate the effects of COVID-19, programs may consider strategies to maximize index testing for childrchildren and adolescents (<19) of people living with HIV.”
We cannot ignore HIV-infected people, and we must strengthen the index monitoring of adolescents and children, so that HIV-infected people can be effectively controlled.

San Francisco's youngest students and those with special needs will return to the classroom next month as Covid-19 rates continue to drop, public school officials said.
Six elementary schools are expected to initially reopen, each with a maximum class size of 22 students, NBC Bay Area reported. Officials announced the plan Friday after the district reached a tentative agreement with the teachers union.
The return to in-person learning will affect about 13,000 students, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Under the plan, students will remain with their teachers while on campus, and safety guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be followed, including wearing masks inside the classroom and maintaining social distance.
"We stand strong in our efforts to work closely with all of our partners and this is an important step on our path to returning to in-person learning," school board President Gabriela Lopez tweeted. "We continue to work extremely hard to ensure every student and family is receiving the support they need in the method they choose."
School officials hope to gradually allow more students to return to in-person learning throughout April, according to a statement from the San Fransisco Unified School District. Meanwhile, teachers are continuing to receive vaccinations before schools reopen.
Families will have a choice whether to continue distance learning for their children or send them back into the classroom. According to a survey conducted by public school officials in January, 57 percent of respondents said they would prefer to return to in-person classes while 43 percent said they would prefer distance learning.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., forced the Senate to begin reading President Joe Biden's entire $1.9 trillion COVID bill aloud on the Senate floor, threatening to further delay the bill’s passage as the Senate clerk reads through the hundreds of pages of the bill.  
Johnson said his tactic was about “educating” the American public on what was in the $1.9 trillion package, which he has derided as full of provisions unrelated to COVID relief. The entire process could take at least 10 hours.  
He told reporters Thursday he felt badly for the Senate clerks who are going to “have to read it,” but it was “important” because “so often we rush these massive bills” which few lawmakers had time to read.  
The Senate voted earlier to begin debate on the bill.  
Senators normally waive the reading of amendments or legislation on the Senate floor, but Johnson invoked a procedural move to compel the reading of the entire bill.  
Republican senators signaled their support for Johnson’s move. Asked about Johnson’s plans, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told reporters “I do” support them. And Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he was “absolutely supportive” of the move because few senators had read the whole text.  
Once the reading of the legislation is complete, the Senate will start 20 hours of debate on the bill, aiming to pass it by the end of the week.
Democrats aim to move the bill through Congress by March 14, when a federal boost to unemployment benefits expires. The House will have to pass it again next week because of the changes made by the Senate.

DETROIT — The mayor changed course Friday and endorsed the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as “safe and effective” after he turned down 6,200 doses of it, insisting that only “the best” would do for his city, meaning the Pfizer and Moderna versions of the Covid-19 vaccine.
“I have full confidence that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is both safe and effective,” Mayor Mike Duggan said in a statement. “We are making plans now for Johnson & Johnson to be a key part of our expansion of vaccine centers and are looking forward to receiving Johnson & Johnson vaccines in the next allocation.”
Later in the afternoon, Duggan released a statement in which he said the city "always intended to distribute Johnson & Johnson once the demand warranted it."
"The only reason we chose to not accept the first shipment of Johnson & Johnson was that we had enough capacity with Moderna and Pfizer to handle the 29,000 first and second dose appointments scheduled for the coming week," he said.
Duggan's course correction came after the senior adviser to the White House Covid-19 task force insisted that the mayor's remarks were a "misunderstanding."
"That was not actually the mayor's intent, and that was not the mayor's comment," Andy Slavitt told reporters Friday. "We've been in constant dialogue with Mayor Duggan who said, in fact, that was not what he said — or however it was reported."
But Duggan, a Democrat who had drawn mostly praise up until then for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccine rollout, was recorded comparing the effectiveness of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine during a Thursday news conference.
“Johnson & Johnson is a very good vaccine, Moderna and Pfizer are the best,” Duggan said. “And I am going to do everything I can to make sure the residents of the city of Detroit get the best.”
Duggan also said he’d be willing to use the Johnson & Johnson vaccine but only if Detroit runs out of the other brands.
“There may come a day when we have more Detroiters asking for vaccines than we have Moderna, Pfizer, in which case we’ll set up a Johnson & Johnson site,” Duggan said.
Not long after that, Duggan started getting an earful.
“Mike Duggan, whose lifeblood is strategic political calculus, has really miscalculated this time,” Chad Livengood wrote Friday in Crain’s Detroit Business. “The Detroit mayor’s rejection of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for Covid-19 is both confounding and dangerous for Michigan’s fight against the insidious virus that has consumed our lives for the past 12 months.”
Public health experts like Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said Duggan is undermining public faith in the single-shot vaccine which has been shown to be effective against Covid-19.

Merck will help manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The governor of Texas says the state can reopen fully next week despite C.D.C. warnings to governors against easing restrictions yet.
President Biden announced Tuesday that there would be enough doses of the coronavirus vaccine available for the entire adult population in the United States by the end of May, though he said it will take longer to inoculate everyone and he urged people to remain vigilant by wearing masks.
Mr. Biden had previously said there would be enough doses by the end of July. On Tuesday, he said the faster production of the vaccine was in part the result of an agreement by the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co to help manufacture the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine under an unusual deal, brokered by the White House.
He said that agreement, along with other efforts by the government to help Johnson & Johnson produce more doses quickly, will substantially increase the supply of the new vaccine and ramp up the pace of vaccination just as worrisome new variants of the virus have been found in the United States.
“As a consequence of the stepped up process that I ordered, and just outlined, this country will have enough vaccine supply as a target for every adult in America by the end of May,” Mr. Biden said. “By the end of May. That’s progress. Important progress.”
He also said he wanted all teachers vaccinated by the end of this month.
The Merck arrangement, first reported by The Washington Post, comes just days after the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Merck is an experienced vaccine manufacturer whose own attempt at making a coronavirus vaccine was unsuccessful. Mr. Biden described the partnership between the two competitors as “historic,” and said it harks back to his vision of a wartime effort to fight the coronavirus, similar to the manufacturing campaigns waged during World War II.
“This is a type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II,” the president said.
Both Trump and Biden administration officials had explored enlisting Merck’s help in manufacturing vaccines developed by either Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson. But Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the White House deserved credit for bringing the deal to fruition.
“There’s a difference between conversations and it moving forward,” she said. “I’m only conveying what got it across the finish line.”
Just how quickly Merck will be able to ramp up is unclear. It will take months for the company to convert its facilities to manufacture and package a vaccine that it did not invent, according to two people familiar with Johnson & Johnson’s operations who were not authorized to speak publicly. But one federal official with knowledge of the arrangement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration hopes the deal would eventually double the doses that Johnson & Johnson could have manufactured on its own.
Although company executives have promised that the firm will catch up this spring, Johnson & Johnson has been running behind on its manufacturing targets as it tries to ramp up at its new plant in Baltimore. Its initial shipments of doses, delivered this week to states, were manufactured at its plant in the Netherlands.
Under the new agreement, Merck will dedicate two of its facilities to production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
One facility will provide “fill-finish,” the final phase of the manufacturing process during which the vaccine is placed in vials and packaged for shipping. The other will make the “drug substance” — the vaccine itself.
Ms. Psaki said that the federal government will invoke the Defense Production Act to help Merck obtain necessary supplies and equipment, and has also asked the Defense Department to strengthen Johnson & Johnson’s manufacturing effort.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the third to receive emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration — following Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.
And the pace of the nation’s vaccination effort has been steadily accelerating. As of Monday, about 50.7 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 25.5 million people who have been fully vaccinated, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines performed somewhat better in clinical trials, all three vaccines are considered safe and effective. And the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has some advantages: It requires only one shot, and studies show it may curb spread of the virus.
The other two vaccines use a new technology called mRNA, which allowed for faster design and testing of vaccine but resulted in a product that required more stringent storage conditions. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which uses viruses to deliver genes into cells, can keep for three months at normal refrigeration temperatures, making it easier to distribute and easier for pharmacies and clinics to stock. At $10 a dose, it is also cheaper than the other two.
Johnson & Johnson’s $1 billion federal contract, signed last year when it had just started developing the vaccine, called for it to deliver 37 million doses by the end of March and a total of 100 million doses by the end of June. The company has now said it can only deliver 20 million doses this month, and senior administration officials have said the vast bulk of those will only be ready in the final weeks of March.
This week, states will receive 3.9 million doses that were manufactured at a Dutch plant and bottled in Grand Rapids, Mich. Johnson & Johnson is expected to mass produce the vaccine at a new Baltimore plant operated by a company called Emergent BioSolutions. Catalent, a different firm, will bottle the doses.
The F.D.A.’s authorization for emergency use, granted late Saturday, covered the Dutch production lines and the Grand Rapids bottling operation. In about two weeks, federal regulators are expected to decide whether to amend that authorization to include the other plants, according to the two people familiar with Johnson and Johnson’s operations. Until then, they said, supply will be uneven and limited.
For nearly a year, Merck has been searching for a way to play a key role in the nation’s vaccination program. Federal officials considered a possible partnership between Merck and Pfizer or Moderna, but Ms. Psaki said the mRNA technology could not be smoothly transferred.
Even with Merck, the two people familiar with Johnson & Johnson’s operations, retooling plants to produce the vaccine will be a laborious, months-long process. By the time it is accomplished the demand for shots may have waned.

PwC Nigeria’s Chief economist, Andrew Nevin has shared his opinion on the recent Nigerian GDP report figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Speaking to TVC Business News anchor via Skype, the foremost economist stated that he remains optimistic about the Nigerian economy following the positive GDP report released.
In his reaction to the latest GDP report, Nevin expressed optimism and called on Nigerian citizens to go easy on the government. He stated that the COVID-19 pandemic has wrecked other economies and has presented countries with very challenging times.
“Let’s put this in perspective, it is easy to be hard on ourselves and Nigeria, but around the world, this has been the greatest health and economic challenges in our lifetime.
“In the UK, the economy shrank in 2020 by almost 10%. The year 2019 to 2020 in Nigeria is about minus 1 percent. Then from the first quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2020, it increased a little bit. These are the few signs of positive happenings in the Nigerian economy. So, I am not surprised,” Nevin said.
On the Information and Communication sector and also the Agriculture sector which were key sectors responsible for the positive GDP growth, Nevin said he was elated with the success of the ICT sector which he attributed to the fact that people were working from homes. He also believed the Agriculture sector could be a lot better than it is.
Nevin also highlighted the emerging growth away from Oil-dependency portrayed by the latest GDP report.
“I mean it’s very good news. There has been a lot of emphasis on ICT. It enables other sectors to do well. It is not a big surprise because people have been working remotely.
“In terms of Agriculture, we will like to see faster growth, but there has been so much emphasis on it paying dividends. When I talk to farmers or people in the agricultural space, they tell me the crops are doing very well. I mean it’s good news and it also shows us that the rotation away from oil is real,” he said.
On the 19.76% plunge of the oil sector, the PWC chief economist highlighted the fall in oil production in the fourth quarter of 2020. He brushed aside the heavy emphasis on Oil prices reminding the audience that Oil production is equally important while analyzing the Oil sector.
“People always tend to think about the oil price but probably as important or more important in the context is the production. The production in the fourth quarter of 2020 was only 1.6m barrels a day. It is a big contraction there. So, the fact that we can grow the Nigerian economy in these very challenging health and economic times shows you the resilience of the Nigerian economy. It shows why people like me are optimistic in the medium term about the Nigerian economy,” he said.
The Recent GDP report confirms that Nigeria has exited the pandemic-induced recession. Andrew Nevin was quizzed on how the Nigerian Government can sustain the positive growth reflected by the latest GDP report.
In response, he highlighted the encouraging partnership between the private and the public sector depicted in the recent Lagos economic summit as one of the key ways to maintain positive growth in the Nigerian economy.

President Joe Biden announced Feb. 24 a reversal of a 2020 proclamation by the Trump administration that sought to keep those applying for permanent residency cards, popularly known as green cards, out of the country because of the pandemic.
The Trump administration said last year it was taking the action to protect U.S. workers who had lost jobs because of the coronavirus crisis. In the reversal, Biden said the action did not “advance the interests of the United States.”
“To the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here. It also harms industries in the United States that utilize talent from around the world,” the new proclamation said.
Catholic organizations and institutions criticized the Trump proclamation when it was announced last year.
Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. called it a “thinly veiled attempt to use the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout as cover for the administration’s racist, anti-immigrant agenda.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also opposed it, saying there was “little evidence that immigrants take away jobs from citizens and that “immigrants and citizens together are partners in reviving the nation’s economy.”
The move is the latest action by Biden to undo a flurry of immigration restrictions put in place by his predecessor’s administration.
Almost from the moment he took office, Biden reversed President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” keeping people from some Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. He also strengthened a program for young adults who entered the U.S. illegally as children, a program Trump tried to end.
Biden also announced a 100-day halt on deportations and has unveiled a preliminary plan to provide a path to citizenship for 11 million unauthorized immigrants.
Regarding Biden’s action to pause deportations, U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton in Texas issued a ruling late Feb. 24 indefinitely banning the move. Texas had sought a preliminary injunction arguing Biden’s deportation halt even temporarily violated federal law and risked imposing additional costs on the state.

Nigeria has exited recession after its economy saw marginal growth in the fourth quarter of 2020 bolstered by growth in agriculture and telecommunications, according to official data released.
Nigeria’s economy grew better than expected, after recording a GDP growth rate of 0.11% in the three months through December, according to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), compared with a decline of 3.6% in the third quarter, Bloomberg and Business Insider reported.
Nigeria slipped into recession after its gross domestic product contracted for the second conservative quarter for the first time since 2016. This was as a result of fragile growth occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic due to low oil prices.
“The surprise rebound means Africa’s largest economy may recover faster than expected as the oil price and output increase this year. It could also point to the growing importance of the non-crude sector,” according to Bloomberg.
Nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on oil cash. However, the oil sector contracted by 13.89 percent in the third quarter against the growth of 6.49 percent in the same period a year earlier, Aljazeera reported.
Oil production accounts for nearly all the foreign exchange earnings of Nigeria and half of government budget revenue. “The recovery is continuing, supported by easing OPEC production cuts and higher oil prices. That said, recurring waves of virus infection, naira devaluation, high inflation and ongoing foreign-exchange shortages will continue to pose risks,” according to Bloomberg economist Boingotlo Gasealahwe.
The NBS attributed the recession to the lockdown measures imposed by the Nigerian government after it confirmed the first case of COVID-19 may have contributed to sliding into recession in the third quarter of 2020.
“The performance of the economy in Q3 2020 reflected residual effects of the restrictions to movement and economic activity implemented across the country in early Q2 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statistics office said.
“As these restrictions were lifted, businesses reopened and international travel and trading activities resumed, some economic activities have returned to positive growth.”
According to the IMF, despite the marginal positive growth in the fourth quarter, the economic situation in Nigeria remains challenging. “Vulnerabilities in the banking sector are rising. Low tax revenues are keeping the fiscal deficit high, leading to more government borrowing that is crowding out private sector activity. Distortions in foreign exchange markets are slowing efforts to attract longer-term investment and diversify the economy,” the IMF said.
The IMF further said Nigeria needs to forcefully address these challenges so that it can provide enough jobs for its young people in the years ahead.

Deaths from COVID-19 in Africa have surged by 40 per cent in the past month.
On February 14, 2020, Egypt became the first African country to record a COVID-19 case. The virus has since spread to the other 53 countries in the continent.
In many African countries, borders were closed, confirmed cases quarantined, and curfews imposed early, which helped countries to slow down the spread of the virus.
But there was deep anxiety about how African countries with largely poor populations, informal economies and far fewer healthcare facilities would cope with the highly infectious disease.
A report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) had predicted up to 3.3 million deaths and 1.2 billion infections in Africa.
However, one year after the pandemic broke in the region, Africa is the least affected region so far, accounting for less than 5 per cent of global COVID-19 cases and 4 per cent of global deaths, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
While Africa fared better at the beginning of the outbreak compared to other regions, the continent suffered a devastating economic crisis which triggered the continent's first recession in 25 years, according to the World Bank.
"In sub-Saharan Africa last year, the GDP fell by 2.6 per cent and the IMF predicts that Africa will be the slowest growing large region in 2021," Regional Director of the WHO, Matshidiso Moeti, said at a press briefing marking one year of COVID-19 in Africa
"The sociology economic impact of this pandemic will have ongoing repercussions for several years in African countries."
An African Union (AU) study had projected that 20 million jobs were at risk in Africa due to the impact of the pandemic. Sub-Saharan Africa's biggest oil producers, Nigeria and Angola, could lose $65 billion in income, the report stated.

Kenya's shilling, Zambia's kwacha and Nigeria's naira are expected to weaken against the dollar in the next week to Thursday, traders said.
KENYA
Kenya's shilling KES= is expected to come under pressure due to month-end dollar demand from importers.
Commercial banks quoted the shilling at 109.45/65 to the dollar, compared with last Thursday's close of 109.35/55.
"We might see it come under pressure as we approach the end of the month because of expected usual end moth demand by the importers," a trader at one commercial bank.
UGANDA
The Ugandan shilling UGX= is seen trading in a broadly stable range amid a general slow uptake of dollars both in the interbank market and from importers.
Commercial banks quoted the shilling at 3,660/3,670, unchanged from last Thursday's close.
"The demand side for dollars has been lethargic for a while and I don't reckon there will be a significant change in the near term," said an independent forex trader in the capital Kampala, who expected the shilling to trade in the 3,650-3,680 range in the week ahead.
TANZANIA
Tanzania's shilling TZS= is expected to remain stable donor inflows from development partners and foreign investors supporting dollar demand.
Commercial banks quoted the shilling at 2,311/2,329 on Thursday, nearly the same levels from last week’s close of 2,314/2,324.
"For the coming week, we foresee a stable shilling on the back of inflows from the EU and investors," Terry Karanja, a treasury associate at AZA, a Nairobi-based foreign exchange trading firm said.
NIGERIA
The naira NGN= is seen easing on the spot market after it lost ground on the derivatives market and hit a record intra-day low on the over-the-counter market this week, traders said.
The naira fell to 423.15 per dollar this week on the spot market, quoted by importers and foreign investors.
It was quoted at 381 naira on the official market, a level set in July and backed by the central bank. The currency sold at 478 naira on the black market on Thursday.
Dollar scarcity hit Nigeria after last year's oil price crash slashed government revenues, piling pressure on the currency and funnelling demand to the black market.
ZAMBIA
The kwacha ZMW= will likely continue to weaken on limited foreign exchange inflows amidst rising expenditures, especially on imports of farming inputs.
On Thursday, commercial banks quoted the currency of Africa's second-largest copper producer at 21.6100 per dollar compared to 21.5350 at the close of business a week ago.