With over 40% of the U.S. population at least partially vaccinated, many of those most at-risk or most eager to get vaccinated have already done so. Now the U.S. faces a tough road ahead to protect hard-to-reach populations.
Some states have already turned down or scaled back vaccine shipments as supply outpaces demand.
Louisiana has stopped asking the federal government for its full allotment of the vaccine while Mississippi asked for the vials to be shipped in smaller packages so they don’t go to waste. About three-quarters of Kansas counties have turned down new shipments of the vaccine at least once over the past month.
The Biden administration expects the daily vaccination rate — currently at 3 million and outpacing many countries — to "moderate and fluctuate" going forward, said Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator. 
"We’ve gotten vaccinations to the most at-risk and those most eager to get vaccinated as quickly as possible," Zients said in a task force briefing Friday. "We know reaching other populations will take time and focus."
In an attempt to better reach those hesitant to take the vaccine, the White House announced a "We Can Do This: Live" campaign to connect people on social media to trusted information by pairing health professionals with influencers, including actress Eva Longoria, TV personality Ryan Seacrest, Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank and players of the NBA and the WNBA. 
Meanwhile, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is available again after an 11-day pause due to reports of rare blood clots. States are counting on the easier-to-store, one-dose option to help protect hard-to-reach populations, including people who are experiencing homelessness, the homebound and incarcerated individuals. 
Although there are some problems with many vaccines, there is no other way to overcome this pandemic but to vaccinate.

Nigeria’s senate has approved President Muhammadu Buhari’s plan to borrow $2.7 billion (2.2 billion euros) from international institutions for infrastructure projects to help an economy hammered by an oil slump and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The lawmakers on Wednesday said in a report they approved external borrowing for $1.5 billion and 995 million euros from the World Bank, the Export-Import Bank of Brazil and Deutsche Bank.
Africa’s biggest economy has recently witnessed fragile growth mainly due to low crude prices. The continent’s top oil producer relies on crude sales for 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings.
Finance minister Zainab Ahmed has said the government would need to pursue foreign loans to effectively finance critical infrastructure.
In March 2020, lawmakers also approved foreign borrowing worth $22.7 billion requested by Buhari’s government. Of that $17 billion was to be provided by the Exim Bank of China.
Nigeria has been borrowing abroad to fund projects after a 2016 recession caused by low global oil prices affected government’s spending plans.
The West African country again slipped into a recession in late 2020 after its gross domestic product contracted for the second consecutive quarter, but unexpectedly emerged from the slump in February 2021.

Mrs Uko Itohowo, the Director, National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Programme, says COVID-19 has worsened Tuberculosis (TB) cases in Nigeria as about 60 per cent of patients go unnoticed and untreated.
Itohowo said this on Monday in a virtual media seminar with newsmen in Ilorin.
She said that according to the 2020 World Health Organisation (WHO) report, Nigeria is ranked first in leading cases of TB in Africa and sixth in the world.
She said currently, TB kills 18 Nigerians every hour, with a record number of 47 Nigerians developing active TB every hour, seven of which are children.

The chief infectious disease expert of the US government said on Sunday that the United States may resume Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine next week. After some very rare cases of blood clots have been reported, there may be restrictions or wider warnings.

At present, the United States should solve the safety problem of vaccines first. It cannot be ignored because there are only 6 abnormal cases. This will cause people to panic.

Lagos — More foreign investors may dump Nigeria for neighbouring countries in the next couple of months as the harsh operating environment occasioned by unstable power supply, policy inconsistency and insecurity, among others, continue to scare investors, LEADERSHIP learnt.
South African-owned Shoprite has disclosed it is relocating from Nigeria, while Twitter is setting up its African office in Ghana, in a move that may force other foreign investors to join the bandwagon.
Shoprite ranks as the biggest shopping mall in Nigeria with outlets in every major city across the country. Reuters reported yesterday that a Nigerian property company will be taking over Shoprite's local business in Nigeria. Shoprite, with more than 2,300 stores across Africa, is awaiting regulatory approval on the sale.
Experts said until the federal government and relevant stakeholders resolve some of the bottlenecks limiting business survival, more investors will leave the shores of the country to somewhere else where the business operating environment is favourable.
To head, Retail Investment at Chapel Hill Denham, Ayodeji Ebo, to win back the trust of investors and companies there is the need for government to create enabling environment.
"They need to tackle insecurity in the country and create an enabling environment that includes protecting companies, both foreign and local companies.
"There should be reduced policy inconsistencies and we also need to create incentive for companies to come in. Recent statistics have shown that long term investments have been dwindling and we need them to create employment in the country.

The University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) is upscale its service in line with healthcare needs of its various patients, an official has disclosed.
Prof. Ikpeme Ikpeme, Chief Medical Director of UCTH, disclosed this while conducting newsmen round the facility as part of his two years
He said that modern equipment have been installed in various departments in the hospital with a view to curb the migration of persons moving out of the state for medical services.
He said that in the Department of Radiology, his administration had acquired a Direct Digital Xray System, 4D Ultra Sound Scanner and a 32 Slight City Scanner.
He explained that patients who visited the hospital for radiologic intervention would not have to go outside the state for the service any longer.
The CMD said that the hospital has automated its laboratories, with the medical microbiology laboratory been a designated Magnetic Resonance Imaging laboratory in the state.
“We have also introduced new services in the hospital, for instance, in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, we have introduced laparoscopy surgery and histeroscopy surgery.
“In the Dental Clinic, we have remodelled the clinic with state of the art machine so that nobody needs to go out of the state for his/her dental service anymore,” he said.
The CMD also said that hospital was deploying an Electronic Health Information Management System with the aim of migrating from the paper clerkship system to an electronic system.
“The level of work done is about 60 per cent because the financial module has been set up completely, and we are doing this from one department to the other.
“The benefit of this is that there is going to be faster intervention times; there won’t be any need to move paper from place to place anymore.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is considering a conditional cash transfer program to help address economic woes that lead migrants from certain Central American countries to trek north, as well as sending COVID-19 vaccines to those countries, a senior White House official told Reuters on Friday.
The potential program would be targeted at people in the Northern Triangle region of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s southern border coordinator, told Reuters in an interview, without saying who exactly would receive cash.
Roughly 168,000 people were picked up by U.S. Border Patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico border in March, the highest monthly tally since March 2001 and part of steadily increasing arrivals in recent months.
“We’re looking at all of the productive options to address both the economic reasons people may be migrating, as well as the protection and security reasons,” Jacobson said.
She did not provide a detailed explanation of how a cash transfer program would work.
“The one thing I can promise you is the U.S. government isn’t going to be handing out money or checks to people,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson said no decision has been made regarding whether to prioritize sending vaccines to the Northern Triangle countries, but said that President Joe Biden’s administration would consider how vaccines could help the countries’ ailing economies. She said the vaccine issue remains separate from immigration-related discussions with the nations.
Jacobson will leave the White House at the end of April, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement on Friday, saying she had committed to the role for the first 100 days of the new administration.
Biden in late March tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead U.S. efforts with Mexico and Central America to address the number of migrants heading north.
Central American countries have faced some of the longest waits in the Americas to get their first vaccines. Frustrated by the time it has taken, some regional governments have begun turning to China and Russia for help, with increasing success.
Biden, who took office on Jan. 20, has called for $4 billion in development aid to Central America over four years to address underlying causes of migration. On Friday, the White House requested $861 million from Congress for that effort in Biden’s first annual budget proposal. That would be a sharp increase from the roughly $500 million in aid this year.
Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, criticized the idea of cash transfers.
“It’s insulting to the millions of Americans who are out of work or facing despair in our country,” he said in a statement Friday evening.
A spokesman for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administers foreign aid, told Reuters in a statement that it is already using cash transfers in programs “to help people meet their basic needs” in the wake of severe hurricanes in Central America in late 2020. USAID is considering expanding the efforts going forward, the spokesman said.
The United States in the past has used the USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives to fund work-for-cash programs in post-conflict nations such as Colombia. Such programs can include labor-intensive rural road-building projects.
Among the options for cash transfers would be to channel funds to individuals through international or local non-governmental organizations that would vet them, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Mexico has proposed similar cash transfer programs as an option during recent meetings with U.S. envoys in Mexico City, a senior Mexican official said. The Mexican government has piloted such projects on a limited scale in Central America, modeled on cash grants it gives to the young unemployed and small farmers, a key pillar of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s domestic welfare programs.

The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) is undergoing investigation on blood clotting in some of the people who received first jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine, according to a report by Daily Post.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, the National Coordinator of NCDC, said at the Presidential Task Force (PTF) while briefing press on COVID-19.
Earlier on Tuesday, the European Medicines Agency made an announcement stating a causal link between AstraZeneca's COVID-19 and rare blood clots. However, Marco Cavaleri, head of the valuation team, Health Threats and Vaccine Strategy, told a Roman newspaper that a definitive statement on the link would be released this week.
Ihekweazu said that the government was aware of the cases of blood clotting in European individuals. He further said, "those investigations are still ongoing. Not all European countries are adopting the vaccines for their populations". He assured that the country has a proper system that would measure and monitor any side effects caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The National Coordinator of NCDC further added that the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and the National Agency for Food Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) are on top of the situation.
"Actions will be taken after data and circumstances are fully evaluated," Ihekweazu added.

The side effects of vaccines are normal, and only through countless studies can the side effects be minimized. We still need to move on.

When President Biden announced in January that he would appoint Wisconsin’s top health officials to the second place in the Department of Health and Human Services, the state seemed to be the most important public health priority for the state: fighting the pandemic. Bad role model.
Wisconsin has just experienced a sharper surge than New York City, and it ranks low among the states when it comes to providing residents with the first dose of vaccine. Only about one-third of the dose sent to the state. The grim numbers provoked Wisconsin Republicans to aim at a familiar target. Andrea Palm, appointed by the state health secretary, has refused to confirm since 2019, even when the state was infected by the coronavirus. Denied her symbolic authority.

The coronavirus was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 3.3 million deaths were reported in the U.S. last year, a 16% increase over 2019, according to provisional data published Wednesday compiled by the National Vital Statistics System, which examines and reports annual mortality statistics based on death certificates.
The deadliest weeks last year were at the beginning of the pandemic and then in the middle of the holiday surge, during the weeks ending April 11, with 78,917 fatalities, and Dec. 26, when 80,656 people died, the CDC found.
According to the study released Wednesday, Covid-19 was listed as the underlying cause for 345,323 deaths, killing more Americans than unintentional injuries, strokes, chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia and kidney disease.
The agency’s early findings were published months ahead of schedule due to “improvements in timeliness and the pressing need for updated, quality data during the global COVID-19 pandemic,” researchers wrote.
Only heart disease and cancer killed more people in the U.S. than Covid-19 in 2020 — heart disease killed 690,882 people and cancer killed 598,932.
Covid-19 replaced suicide among the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S., the study found. Overall, the annual death rate increased by nearly 16% in 2020 compared with a year earlier, the first time it’s grown since 2017, the CDC said.
The highest annual death rates were reported among men, people ages 85 and older, and people who are non-Hispanic Black and American Indian and Alaskan Native, the CDC said.
However, when looking at Covid-19 alone, Hispanic and American Indian and Alaskan Native people, as well as those ages 85 and older, died from the disease at higher rates compared with every other group. Men died from Covid-19 at a higher rate than women.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said following the study’s release that the findings should serve “as a catalyst” for Americans to drive down the spread of the virus and get vaccinated once it’s their turn.
“I know this is not easy and so many of us are frustrated with the disruption this pandemic has had on our everyday lives, but we can do this as a nation working together,” Walensky said during a White House Covid-19 press briefing Wednesday.
It typically takes researchers 11 months after the end of the calendar year to investigate “certain causes of death and to process and review data.” While the daily total Covid death figures reported by the CDC are timely, they can underestimate the actual number of deaths because of “incomplete or delayed reporting.”
“Provisional death estimates provide an early indication of shifts in mortality trends and can guide public health policies and interventions aimed at reducing numbers of deaths that are directly or indirectly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic,” researchers wrote.
Some have tried to sow doubt about the true amount of deaths caused by Covid-19, claiming they may have been overstated. However, in a separate CDC study published Wednesday, the agency found that the death certificates accurately reflected the number of reported coronavirus fatalities.
The agency examined death certificates listing Covid-19 and at least one other co-occurring condition. The CDC found that in 97% of the deaths, Covid-19 was reported alongside another condition that was possibly caused by the virus, such as pneumonia or respiratory failure, or significantly contributed to its severity, such as diabetes or hypertension.
A small proportion of them — 2.5% of the certificates — documented conditions that aren’t currently associated with Covid-19, the CDC found.
“These findings support the accuracy of COVID-19 mortality surveillance in the United States using official death certificates,” the researchers said.

CDC: Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines found 90 percent effective in 'real-world' study
The Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines are extremely effective in the real world, reducing infections by 90 percent in fully vaccinated people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky called the study "tremendously encouraging" in a briefing Monday, adding that it "underscored the importance of getting both of the recommended doses of the vaccine in order to get the greatest level of protection against Covid-19, especially as our concerns about variants escalate."
The findings are the first real-world data from the United States, and are in line with similar research from other countries. A study from Israel recently found the Pfizer vaccine to be 97 percent effective in preventing Covid-19, including severe disease and death.
The CDC study included 3,950 people in the U.S. who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine during the height of country's winter surge, from mid-December to mid-March. All were essential workers, including health care personnel and first responders from six states: Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas and Utah.
Two weeks after participants received both of the recommended doses, their risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection was reduced by 90 percent. (People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they received their final dose.)
Even the first dose had an effect, reducing infection risk by 80 percent, the study found.
Importantly, the research also showed that both vaccines not only prevent people from getting sick with Covid-19, they also help prevent asymptomatic infections, in which people never develop symptoms.
Public health officials view Covid-19 vaccines as the best way to end the worst of the pandemic, particularly as a growing number of states relax restrictionsand lift mask mandates.
Just over 140 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered. More than 51 million Americans have been fully vaccinated.
But that leaves many Americans still vulnerable to Covid-19, and Walensky issued an urgent warning Monday as cases are once again on the rise. The average number of daily Covid-19 cases is just under 60,000 — a 10 percent increase from the previous week. The numbers of hospitalizations and deaths have also risen in recent weeks, but not as dramatically.
“I so badly want to be done, I know you all so badly want to be done," Walensky said during the briefing. "We're just almost there, but not quite yet. And so I'm asking you to just hold on a little longer to get vaccinated when you can, so that all of those people that we all love will still be here when this pandemic ends.”
She continued, speaking frankly: "I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I'm scared."

Vaccination is an important means to stop Covid-19. It is necessary to increase the number of vaccines on the premise of ensuring vaccine safety.

This time last year, the United States was under fire because in spite of expensive efforts by state and federal government organizations, COVID-19 testing initially turned out to be a mess. Now the United States is among the world's leaders when it comes to testing per capita, outpacing countries such as Italy, Sweden, and Canada. Dr. Sung Yang is going to shed light on how the U.S. was able to turn things around."Pointing fingers doesn't help anyone, but truthfully, there were some preventable challenges early on," Dr. Sung Yang says. "The initial test kits were inaccurate and there weren't enough resources at first to support private sector development. This slowed the initial response while other countries raced ahead."
One of the biggest hurdles early on was the development of an accurate test kit. Initially, the United States didn't collaborate closely with the World Health Organization and other governments to develop accurate testing kits. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had the resources and talent to develop their own kits, but early efforts suffered various setbacks, according to Dr. Sung Yang.
Even once the United States developed proper kits to begin accurate testing, the lack of detailed national guidelines and questions over who should pay caused more issues. In the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States lagged behind many other countries.
Yet after these early stumbles, breakthroughs led to better test kits. Meanwhile, the government and various other private organizations started to pour money into COVID-19 testing, which made it possible to expand operations, according to Dr. Sung Yang.
Dr. Sung Yang Discusses the Advantages of a Decentralized Healthcare System
Compared to some other countries, the United States healthcare system is not nearly as centralized. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, the government and central agencies coordinate activities and resources. In the United States, the CDC and other federal organizations provide guidelines, resources, assistance, and more, but the execution is often left to state and local hospitals and organizations.
Arguably, the United States decentralized healthcare system initially slowed down testing, but once organizations and communities began to focus on testing, testing became accurate, rapid, and widespread.
"No healthcare system is perfect," Dr. Sung Yang points out, "the United States relies on a lot of small practices and local hospitals to deliver care. This can make the initial stages of coordination difficult. However, these small organizations are flexible and many are staffed with incredibly talented people. Once they began to focus on testing, it allowed the U.S. to quickly catch up."
Ultimately, the synergy between national agencies and organizations, like the CDC, and the smaller regional and local healthcare providers allowed the US to expand the COVID-19 testing in a tremendous scale. The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, but with rapid testing and expansive vaccine rollouts, Dr. Sung Yang believes that there is hope on the horizon.

Covid-19 wiped out millions of jobs. But the vaccination effort is bringing jobs back — and some of them for good.
With millions of Americans expected to be fully vaccinated by the summer, pharmacies and medical clinics have been on hiring sprees for what people may have thought of as temporary jobs. But some companies appear to be treating these thousands of newly created jobs as permanent positions — a promising sign for the roughly 10 million unemployed workers in the country.
Newly released data from the job search engine ZipRecruiter found that the number of jobs that include the term "vaccine" or "vaccination" grew sixfold since the same time last year, amounting to a total of 50,000 open positions. These newly posted job titles include licensed practical nurses, medical assistants, lab technicians, pharmacists and truck drivers. It also found hundreds of job postings for vaccine clinic clerks and managers and program coordinators. About 90 percent of these jobs are full time, with about half of the jobs advertised as temporary or contractor positions, ZipRecruiter found.
“It’s not clear this is just a temporary, 'mission to the moon' type situation where you have this huge mobilization and then it’s over,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist with ZipRecruiter who studied this data. “There are signs that immunity to Covid may not last forever and some of these programs may be longer lasting than many of us think.”
These new job postings follow a hiring spree in recent months by companies trying to fill vaccine-distribution-related jobs, particularly major pharmacy chains like CVS Health, Walgreens and Rite Aid. CVS Health said last fall it planned to fill 15,000 new vaccine-related positions. Walgreens has targeted 25,000 new hires dedicated to the vaccine rollout. These latest figures by ZipRecruiter also include the more than 2,000 pharmacy jobs Rite Aid is currently hiring for as well as the 1,000 health care workers being hired by grocery chain Kroger.
The spike in hiring across the health care sector may accelerate job recovery in what was one of the fastest-growing industries before the pandemic, said Brian Rose, a senior economist with UBS Financial Services. Over the last year, the health care industry has lost roughly 900,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, specifically in nursing care facilities, where workers found it safer and more profitable to stay home, and hospitals, largely due to the drop in elective surgeries.

The suspension of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines in some countries following reports of cases of blood clots and other side effects may increase hesitancy to accept a COVID-19 vaccine.
Already, there are also fears that the development could erode public trust in the vaccines and hamper efforts to achieve herd immunity.
Meanwhile, with the European Medicines Agency, EMA, investigation showing the vaccine was safe, last Thursday, medical experts in Nigeria say there was no need to discontinue the vaccination.
According to them, only vaccines can help the country achieve herd immunity.
A host of European countries had put all vaccinations with Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on hold.
These countries include Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Ireland.
Others, such as DRC Congo, Estonia and Austria, also suspended vaccinations.
Most of the countries claimed their action was due to cases of blood-clotting conditions among those who had received the vaccine.
AstraZeneca react
But the Oxford/AstraZeneca, in a statement, stated that after a careful review of data from the 17 million people vaccinated in the E.U. and U.K. with its shot, there was no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or thrombocytopenia, in any defined age group, gender and batch or in any particular country.
They noted that among the millions vaccinated in the E.U. and U.K., just 15 have developed DVT or blood clots in the blood vessels, and 22 have developed clots in the lungs that originated elsewhere and travelled to pulmonary arteries.

The state says it vaccinated 12,720 people with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine within 48 hours.
The Lagos state government has clarified that the first phase of COVID-19 vaccination is strictly for health workers and other frontline groups in the state.
Akin Abayomi, the Commissioner for Health, said this on Thursday according to a statement by the state's ministry of health.
Mr Abayomi said the clarification became important to prevent the chaos that is likely to happen when people begin to overcrowd the vaccination centres.
Listing those eligible, Mr Abayomi said only health workers; COVID-19 response team (RRT); ports of entry staff in air, land, and seaports; laboratory network, judiciary; military, police, other security agencies; petrol station workers; teachers; press, and other frontline workers will be vaccinated.
"We have noticed a high turn out of citizens who doesn't fit into the eligibility category of phase one, turning out at various approved vaccination sites to get vaccinated.
"While this is a good indication of citizens' acceptance of the vaccine, we will however not jettison our strategic vaccination plan which has been scheduled in four phases for sentiments in order to achieve the overall objective of the campaign.
"The need to make this clarification has become very critical to the success of the vaccination campaign in order to prevent imminent chaos that may result from a situation of overcrowding at the vaccination sites," the Commissioner said.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how the state vaccinated 12,720 people with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine within 48 hours.
The vaccination exercise commenced on March 15 in 88 health facilities in the state, including military and police hospitals.
The commissioner advised citizens who are not in the eligibility list of phase one to await the commencement of the phase they fit into, adding that everyone will be captured in the four phases of vaccination.
Individuals who are eligible for the first phase must register before they are vaccinated via: https://www.nphcdaict.com.ng or https://www.vaccination.gov.ng.
The commissioner said despite that the registration portal is open to the public, only eligible participants within phase one should register for the vaccination.
Mr Abayomi said all enrollees will be issued a vaccination ID and receive and a confirmation text message, after which they can proceed to any of the 88 vaccination sites picked at the point of registration to receive the first dose of the vaccine.
"Enrolees will be issued a green COVID vaccination card which has a barcode as confirmation of vaccination immediately after recieving the vaccine and scheduled for a second dose for complete protection," he said.

Vaccine location listings include operating hours, address, phone number, and a link to the provider's website where Apple Maps users can get more information about available vaccines and book an appointment.
Apple has also introduced a Siri integration for vaccines. You can ask ‌Siri‌ "Where can I get a COVID vaccination?" to be directed to a nearby location.
VaccineFinder, a free online service from the Boston's Children Hospital is providing the data for the new ‌Apple Maps‌ feature, and the initial rollout includes more than 20,000 locations. Apple plans to add more sites in the coming weeks. Healthcare providers, labs, and other businesses can also submit information on COVID-19 testing or vaccination locations on Apple's Business Register Page, and once validated, the info may be displayed on ‌Apple Maps‌.
‌Apple Maps‌ also includes COVID-19 testing locations in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States, along with COVID-19 modules for businesses to share special hours and other information.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats will push to make permanent two provisions of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill that provide emergency enhanced benefits for the poor through food assistance and child tax credits, two leading lawmakers said on Sunday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that making enhanced child tax credits permanent is an important goal for Democrats, as they seek to move forward with bold new initiatives that also include legislation to upgrade U.S. infrastructure.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Schumer’s fellow New York Democrat, called separately for enhancements for a nutrition program aimed at women, infants and children in the $1.9 trillion bill to be extended indefinitely.
Biden’s legislation temporarily increased the value of the program’s cash vouchers for fruits and vegetables from $9 per month for children and $11 for women to $35 per month for both.
The bill also expands the U.S. federal child tax credit for one year from a partially refundable $2,000 per child to a fully refundable $3,600 credit for children under 6 and $3,000 for children aged 6 to 17, a move that experts say will significantly decrease child poverty in the United States.
“That’s one of the most important things we can do. We can change America, if we make them permanent,” Schumer told MSNBC. “It will be so good for these kids, their families, but for all of America and our economy.”
Nearly 11 million, or one in seven, U.S. children live in poverty, the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, estimates.
Making the provisions permanent could prove difficult, with many Republicans opposed to any expansion in U.S. welfare services that is not accompanied by work requirements for benefit recipients.
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives can pass legislation on a simple majority and has begun to move bills that reflect party priorities such as police reform, gun control and measures to enhance voter participation. But the 100-seat Senate, which is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, requires 60 votes for most legislation.
Schumer said Democrats would try to work with Republicans to enact “bold change” but warned that his caucus would consider other means, including possible changes to Senate rules, if Republicans continue to oppose Democratic legislation.
“But if we can’t, if they vote ‘no’ on everything in terms of the kinds of change that America needs, then our caucus will have to get together and figure out how to get it done,” Schumer said. “Everything will be on the table and failure is not an option.”
Biden’s COVID-19 bill passed the House and Senate without support from a single Republican.

16 out of the 35 states of the federation yesterday received a total of 1,871,050 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the federal government.
LEADERSHIP findings showed that the states got doses of the vaccine as follows: Benue State 78,108, Borno State 75,510, Ekiti State 52,000, Jigawa State 68,000, Nasarawa State 61,000, Niger State 74,110, Ondo State 73, 570 and Cross River State 50,840.
Others are Osun State 64,240 doses, Ebonyi 2, 000, Plateau 105,600, Ogun 100,000; Adamawa 59,280 while other states that received the vaccine could not disclose the number of doses.
Lagos State, which is the epicenter of the infection, got the lion's share of 507,000 doses, with Kano and Kaduna States trailing behind with 200,000 and 180,000 doses respectively.
Meanwhile, in Benue State, the commissioner for Information and Culture, Ngunan Adingi, said the state has taken delivery of 50,000 doses of the vaccine.
Adingi disclosed this in Màkurdi while briefing journalists after the State Executive Council meeting at the Government House.
Also, no fewer than 50,840 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine arrived at Calabar, the Cross River State capital, to assist health workers tackle the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
The vaccine arrived at the Margaret Ekpo International Airport aboard a CACOVID private jet and was received by the chairman of Cross River State COVID-19 task force/response team, who doubles as commissioner for Health, alongside Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Eteng Williams.
In Ogun State, the government took delivery of 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine donated to the state by the federal government.
The consignment, which was neatly packaged and stored in mini refrigerators, was received in two batches of 50,000 each between Monday night and Tuesday by the state governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, shortly after the arrival of the state team led by the commissioner for Health, Dr. Tomi Coker.
Meanwhile, Lagos State governor, Babajide SanwoOlu, has revealed that the state government will start rolling out the 507,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine in its possession at the weekend.
Sanwo-Olu said a steering committee set up for the vaccine administration was in its final stage of preparation for the deployment of the vaccine, confirming that the state had a clear-cut strategy for the vaccine distribution.
For its part, Borno State government received a total of 75,510 doses of COVID-19 vaccine from the federal government.
Receiving the vaccine, which arrived in Maiduguri International Airport at exactly 9pm on Monday, the state deputy governor, Alhaji Usman Kadafur, said the state will begin the administration of the vaccine to residents as of yesterday Wednesday.
Ekiti State also took delivery of 100,000 doses of its share of the vaccines from the federal government.
The state Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Dr Oyebanji Filani, received the vaccine at the Akure Airport in Ondo State on behalf of the government on Tuesday.
In Ebonyi State, the Commissioner for Health, Dr Daniel Umezurike, said that the team from the state Ministry of Health was currently in Enugu to take delivery of 42,090 doses of the vaccine allotted to the state.
He said the ministry, after taking delivery of the vaccine, would commence the vaccination immediately.
Also, Niger State commissioner for Health and Hospital Services, Dr Muhammad Makusidi, said that the state received 74,110 doses of the vaccine.
Niger State governor, Abubakar Sani-Bello, flagged off the vaccination in the state by taking the first jab followed by his deputy, Ahmed Mohammed Ketso and other state executive council members.
The vaccine was administered on Sani-Bello by his personal physician, Dr Shehu Ahmed, at the Government House, Minna.
In Bauchi, the state government said it has so far received 80,570 out of the 150,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine allotted to it by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).
The state deputy governor, Senator Baba Tela, who disclosed this, while receiving the vaccine at the cold store of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), hinted that the first beneficiaries of the vaccine will be frontline health workers, government officials, security personnel, traditional and religious leaders.
For his part, Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, said the state government has received 180,000 doses of the vaccine from the federal government.
The governor who announced this at the Government House during the presentation of 2020 security report publicly took the vaccine yesterday to encourage residents.
The Plateau State commissioner for Health, Dr. Nenkor Lar, said the state also received its own doses of the vaccine on Tuesday.
According to him, the doses of the vaccine received were 105,600, which is exactly the number allocated to the state by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19.
Also, as of press time yesterday, the Abia State commissioner for health, Dr Jeo Osuji, told LEADERSHIP that delivery of the vaccine was being awaited up till 10pm the previous day after the PTF had put the ministry on alert for it.
Meanwhile, the Osun State government took delivery of a total of 64,240 doses of the vaccine allocated to it by the federal government.
According to the commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Mrs Funke Egbemode, the vaccine was received at the Akure Airport around 7:11pm on Tuesday by the state medical team led by the Commissioner for Health, Dr Rafiu Isamotu.
Egbemode said the state government was prepared to preserve and administer the vaccine, having trained about 300 health workers for the vaccination exercise and installed storage facilities (cold chain) across the 332 wards in the State.
The Nasarawa State government took delivery of the vaccine at about 2am on Tuesday in Lafia, the state capital.
The vaccine was delivered by road from Abuja to the state while the doses received, according to the state deputy governor, Dr Emmanuel Akabe, were 61,000.
For his part, Delta State governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, will tomorrow launch the COVID-19 vaccination exercise to kick start the phase 1 of the vaccine rollout for the state.
The chairman, Delta State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (DSPHCDA), Dr Isioma Okobah, stated this while addressing some officers of the military and paramilitary services in Asaba yesterday.
In Jigawa State, Governor Muhammad Badaru Abubakar and his deputy, Malam Umar Namadi, yesterday, were given the vaccine 24 hours after the first consignment was delivered to the state.
Speaking shortly after taking the vaccine at Government House Clinic in Dutse, Governor Badaru stated that he and his deputy as well as members of the state executive council had taken the vaccine.
Also, the Kwara State government on Tuesday night received its own consignment of the COVID-19 Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine from the federal government.
The consignment arrived in the Ilorin International Airport at about 8.30pm and was received by the state government's delegation led by the Permanent Secretary of the state Ministry of Health, Dr. Abubakar Ayinla.
The executive secretary, Kwara State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Nusirat Elelu, said the state was excited to witness the delivery of the vaccine to support its fight against coronavirus.
Also, the Imo State government, yesterday, confirmed it received the vaccine but could not disclose the number of the doses.
The vaccine arrived via the Sam Mbakwe International Cargo Airport, Owerri yesterday at about 6pm.
In Ondo State, Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu and his deputy, Hon. Lucky Ayedatiwa, yesterday got their jabs of the vaccine in Akure, the state capital.
Others who were administered with the vaccine are the Deji of Akure, Oba Aladelusi Aladetoyinbo and the Osemawe of Ondo, Oba Victor Kiladejo, as well as some top government functionaries.
Speaking after receiving the vaccine, Akeredolu hinted that the cold chain for the storage of the vaccine remained actively functional in Ondo State
In Enugu, the state has submitted the total list of health workers to
the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja.
NSCIA Affirms Safety Of Vaccine
Meanwhile, The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) said it has affirmed that the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine being used in the country was safe for Muslims.
The apex Islamic body said it authenticated the efficacy of the vaccine in consultations with its partners in the medical science before the arrival of the vaccine in the country.
NSCIA's spokesperson, Ibrahim Selemi, who made the pronouncement in a chat with LEADERSHIP, said the Council in conjunction with the NPHCDA and UNICEF organised a sensitisation programme for Muslim scholars and Imams on efficacy of the vaccine on January 26, 2021.
He said another sensitisation programme will be organise before the end of this month to reinforce and reaffirm the safety of the vaccine for Muslim faiths.
We Won't Force Anyone To Take It - CAN
But the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has said it won't compel its members to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
CAN, in an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP yesterday in Abuja, said Nigerians were already well sensitised on coronavirus.
General Secretary of CAN, Joseph Bade Daramola, told our correspondent that the association will not compel its members to take the vaccine or persuade anybody not to take it.
"Taking COVID-19 vaccine is a matter of choice. It is in the media. People are already taking the vaccine.
"People are the masters of their faith. So the decision is yours to take the vaccine or not. But we know that the vaccine can avert contracting the vaccine in line with the recommendation of the World Health Organisation," he noted.

Though we’ve cycled through many kinds of public health interventions in our struggle to stop Covid-19 from spreading, mass vaccination is now the primary means through which we’re aiming to end the pandemic for good. Given this, more than ever we need to be studying mass vaccination campaigns that proved successful. The most astounding of these by far was polio—an eradication effort more than 70 years in the making that, thanks to a new vaccine model, may finally come to an end. In this article I’ll explore the research behind this vaccine in greater detail, not just to elaborate on why it is so impressive, but to delve deeper into its lessons for the current crisis.
Of all the diseases to cause global pandemics in the past century, the only we’ve truly eradicated in humans so far is smallpox. But the prevalence polio, thanks to vaccines, has been reduced to a small sliver of what it once was—at its worst in the late 1940s, infecting hundreds of thousands and paralyzing more than 35,000 people a year. As of last year, when the polio case count in Nigeria officially reached zero, the only wild-type poliovirus that remains in circulation is in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the majority of contemporary immunization campaigns are focused. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, the poliovirus exists only in humans, meaning it can’t come at us sideways from an animal reservoir. Even so, parallels exist between the two that are worth considering as our conversations begin to shift from short-term to long-term immunity.
One lesson from polio we must take into account is the importance of distinguishing between a vaccine that prevents disease and a vaccine that prevents transmission. The struggle to eradicate polio drove home the fact that different vaccines elicit different types of immunity, each with its own set of implications for public health. The current generation of Covid-19 vaccines, created by the likes of Moderna and Pfizer, prevents serious illness and death, as evidenced by their enormous success in clinical trials. But whether they will stop transmission is currently unknown.
The distinction is an important one, in some cases a matter of life or death. The inactivated polio vaccine created by Jonas Salk in 1953 is able to prevent disease—that is, the onset of debilitating symptoms like paralysis—and trigger a long-lasting antibody response that can remain in effect for many, many years. But it doesn’t prevent infection or transmission through the nose, mouth, or gut, which is why it wasn’t effective at wiping out the poliovirus altogether. People vaccinated with it could still shed infectious virus. It was ultimately the live-attenuated oral polio vaccine, an invention of Albert Sabin’s used for the first time in 1961, that made the largest contribution to global eradication, not just because it was cheaper and easier to administer, but also by virtue of its ability to prevent the holy trinity of infection, transmission, and disease. How it elicits such powerful immunity remains somewhat a mystery, but its efficacy cannot be denied.
Another important distinction exists between SARS-CoV-2 and poliovirus that is equally instructive. For both viruses the roots of transmission are similar but different. For polio, it’s mostly gut-based but also nasopharyngeal; for Covid-19, it’s the opposite, mostly through the nose and mouth but occasionally the gut, characteristic of respiratory viruses in general. That we still need an annual flu shot is proof of how difficult it has been to develop vaccines capable of engendering long-lasting immunity against respiratory viruses. One reason why is we simply don’t know enough about their immunology more broadly—a gap in our knowledge we’ve had opportunities to fill, but whether for lack of interest, funds, or infrastructure never did.
Intimate knowledge of viral mechanisms of transmission doesn't come easy or cheap. Our near-global eradication of polio, as well as our deep understanding of how the poliovirus works, is the product of many decades of research dedicated not just to polio specifically but molecular biology, gene manipulation, and advancing biomedicine at large. Funding was in abundance, and the collective will to push the frontiers of what we knew was strong. Over a span of decades scientists around the world studied the virus rigorously, discovering that the main obstacle to permanent eradication was its ability to occasionally regain virulence despite vaccination—hence the handful of cases each year. Every so often, they discovered, the attenuated virus—that is, a non-virulent version—used to create the oral vaccine reverts to its original disease-causing and potentially paralyzing form. Infections caused by these viruses, which are estimated to occur at a rate of 4.7 per million births, are referred to as vaccine associated paralytic poliomyelitis. Though the inactivated virus used in Salk’s vaccine doesn’t cause the same problem, the oral vaccine is so much easier to distribute that merely switching from one to the other isn’t the simple solution it may seem to be.
For decades, vaccine associated paralytic poliomyelitis was considered a necessary risk. But as we’re now well aware, thanks to our struggle to contain Covid-19, so long as one person is infected, no one is totally safe from harm. The good news is that advances in genetic technology are helping us tackle the challenge of viral evolution with greater precision—which is exactly what a group of scientists working under the auspices of the New Oral Poliovirus Vaccine Consortium has done, according to a study published last year in Cell Host & Microbe. By identifying the exact mutations that allow an attenuated poliovirus to become dangerous once again and engineering a version that averts them, this research brings us one step closer to a vaccine that could eradicate polio once and for all.
Perhaps the main reason why the oral polio vaccine is so effective at preventing infection and transmission is its ability to engender immunity in both the mouth, nose, and gut. As I mentioned before, excretions from both these bodily points of entry and exit are the most efficient routes a poliovirus can take—aided and abetted by poor sanitary conditions—to get from one host to another. By introducing an attenuated virus at the intestinal level, the oral vaccine eliminates these modes of contagion, and by extension its ability to circulate freely in the wild.
One of the biggest determinants of attenuation is a point mutation, 481A, in a noncoding region of the poliovirus known as domain V, or domV, that destabilizes the virus’s translation mechanism, in essence keeping it from expressing more lethal forms of itself. It is in the best interest of the virus, however, to mutate and select for structural stability. And when the difference between the two is only a matter of a single nucleotide, it should come as no surprise that in the few VAPP outbreaks that have occurred in recent years, a 481 A-to-G mutation appeared with high frequency.
The goal of the researchers, then, was to engineer a virus that greatly reduced the likelihood of mutation and recombination events—in other words, curtail its capacity to adapt even further—without compromising the process of viral replication that is so essential to building gut immunity. How they did this came down to a total of five modifications, divided up between three areas of focus.
First was domV, which they not only stabilized but locked into a tight configuration, so as to occlude any possibility of reversion. Second, they altered the error-prone polymerase, an enzyme key to viral evolution and genetic diversity more generally. Last but not least, they relocated a cis-acting replication element (cre) closer to and upstream of domV. That way if the virus does attempt recombination, it won’t be able to swap out the stabilized bits so readily. These alterations, deduced based on evidence from cell culture and animal models, work against reversion in tandem, but are at their core functionally independent, coming together to form a “multilayer safety-net.” Even if mutations still developed in all three of these targeted areas—a highly unlikely occurrence, but minutely possible nonetheless—that strain would still be at least 250 times as attenuated as a reverted version of the current oral vaccine.
The next step was to test the safety and efficacy of the engineered virus through a phase I vaccination trial. To work, the new vaccine, which the researchers called nOPV2, had to be just as antigenic and immunogenic as before, but without the near omnipresence of reversion-enabling mutations in the shed virus of trial participants. Strikingly, trial participants who received a dose of the nOPV2 vaccine had no mutations, including at the 481 site, in the domV region, confirming that the modifications had successfully impeded viral evolution without affecting replication.
What these researchers were able to achieve by using new technology to rigorously analyze the poliovirus, its enabling mechanisms, and countermeasures against it is nothing short of remarkable. Therein lies the final and arguably most important lesson that polio research has for those of us trying to unravel the current crisis. To create effective, long-lasting countermeasures like vaccines that will grant us immunity from Covid-19 not just this year, but the next and the many thereafter, we need to understand the virus SARS-CoV-2 in much greater detail, pouring as much funding and resources into coronavirus research as we did for polio back in the 1940’s and 50’s. Such an effort would come with the added bonus of shedding light on other respiratory viruses—primarily influenza—that have mystified us for so long.
In my next piece for this series, I will delve further into how the battle against polio was won, focusing specifically on a factor that isn’t altogether missing from efforts to stop the current pandemic, but could certainly be improved: global cooperation.

The Delta State Government has commenced its Federal Government and World Bank version of the economic interventionist programme tagged the Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) programme.
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, who unveiled the state’s NG-CARES Steering Committee in Asaba, the state capital, tasked the nine-member committee to provide oversight and policy guidance for effective implementation of the programme.
Headed by the Commissioner for Economic Planning, Dr. Barry Gbe, he explained that the programme, besides providing guidance and oversight during the NG-CARES programme, the committee would meet frequently to consider issues affecting the programme and take appropriate action, as well as consider and approve annual work plans.
“The Steering Committee will also provide periodic updates to the governor every six months or as may be required,” he said.
Director, Overseas Development Assistance, Lady Patience Ogbewe, disclosed that the NG-CARES programme was a short-term response to the economic crisis occasioned by the outbreak of the corona virus pandemic in Nigeria.
Ogbewe said the CARES programme was designed to support budgeted government interventions at the state level, which focus on targeting existing and emerging vulnerable and poor households, farmers, as well as Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) affected by the coronavirus-induced economic crisis.
She explained that the Programme Development Objective (PDO) was to expand access to livelihood support and food security services and give grants to poor and vulnerable households and firms, stressing that it outlined a two-year financial support to states to achieve results in some major areas.
She disclosed that it would focus on increasing cash transfers and livelihood support to poor and vulnerable households by supporting the scaling up of existing safety net interventions at the state level.
It would revive safety net interventions to expand coverage of social transfers, labour intensive public work opportunities, livelihood grants and social service infrastructure micro projects.
It would also focus on increasing food security and safe functioning of food supply chain for poor households, provision of seeds, fertilizers and agricultural extension services to farmers, opportunities to improve agricultural infrastructure, provision of agricultural inputs for mitigating food losses and upgrading wet markets to allow safe buying and selling of food produce.
She added that the programme would facilitate recovery, enhance the capacity of Medium and Small Scale Enterprises (MSEs), support improved interventions that help MSEs through grants to support post COVID-19 loans, grants to support operational costs and enhance ICT capabilities.

Covid-19 has killed nearly 51,000 people in California, which on Wednesday became the first state to pass 50,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, according to an NBC News count of reports.
The state has seen more than 3.5 million infections, a statistic that also leads the nation based on raw numbers. California is also the most populous state with around 40 million people.
As of Wednesday night, New York state had more than 48,000 reported deaths, and Texas had more than 42,000, according to NBC News' count.
Part of the increase in California's reported deaths Wednesday came from Los Angeles County, which announced 806 deaths that initially had not been counted as associated with Covid-19.
The county's health department said those deaths came after extensive checks of death records and occurred during a major surge from Dec. 3 to Feb. 3.
At the time of the surge, not all deaths were reported to the department because of the volume of records, officials said. A later review of vital records that list the cause of death found them, it said. There were already more than 9,700 deaths reported from December through January, it said.
"It is heartbreaking to report on this large number of additional deaths associated with Covid-19 and a devastating reminder of the terrible toll the winter surge has taken on so many families across the county," Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said in a statement.
New daily reported cases of Covid-19 have been falling across the country in recent weeks, but health experts have said that the numbers are still very high.
On Sunday, the nation passed 500,000 deaths. As of Wednesday evening, the U.S. had recorded more than 28 million cases, according to NBC News' count.

President Biden said on Tuesday that the U.S. will produce enough vaccines for every adult in the U.S. by the end of May, while making a fresh push to vaccinate school staff over the next month.
"We're now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May," Biden said, crediting his administration's efforts to boost production and moving up the timeline from the end of July, which is what the president was saying just a few weeks ago.
As announced earlier in the day, Biden said his administration is invoking the Defense Production Act to boost production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration over the weekend.
In an unusual partnership between two pharmaceutical competitors, the administration is helping to ensure that Merck facilities can help Johnson & Johnson boost its production.
Biden also called on states to prioritize teachers and school staff as essential workers in the vaccination schedule, calling for every grade-school employee and child care provider to receive at least one dose of a vaccine by the end of the month.
"As yet another move to help accelerate the safe reopening of schools, let's treat in-person learning like an essential service that it is. And that means getting essential workers who provide that service — educators, school staff, child care workers — get them vaccinated immediately. They're essential workers," the president said.
Biden said that already at least 30 states prioritize educators in the queue for vaccines, but he was "using the full authority of the federal government" to direct all states and the District of Columbia to do the same. Biden said the change will go into effect next week to move pre-K through 12th-grade school staff ahead in line. He also said the federal government would use its program that ships vaccines to local pharmacies to help facilitate doses for educators.
Reopening schools for in-person learning has been among the pricklier debates to emerge within the coronavirus pandemic, and it's something Biden has prioritized. There's broad scientific consensus that young children are far less prone to the more dangerous effects of the coronavirus and are less likely to spread the virus. But young adults like high school and college students, as well as school staff, are at higher risk.
"What a tremendous relief to have a president who is meeting this moment of crisis. Vaccinations are a key ingredient to reopening schools safely, and this is the administration taking the steps to ramp up vaccinations for educators, which is great news for everyone who wants in-school learning," American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement.

He stated this on Thursday while receiving a report on a sectoral roundtable session on healthcare delivery system, organised by the house committee on media and public affairs.
The report, titled: ‘Green Book’, is a documentation of sectorial engagements that provide solutions on how to reposition and reform the health sector in the country.
While noting that even the health systems of advanced nations have felt the impact of the coronavirus, Gbajabiamila said in the case of Nigeria, the pandemic “brought out the underbelly of the country”.
The speaker, however, said the country has been able to rise to the challenges in the health sector.
“We all said it here, that the whole world was thrown into disarray with the advent of the COVID-19; even the most advanced democracies and the most developed health sectors did not know what to do. They were caught napping,” he said.
“In our case in Nigeria, it brought out the underbelly of the country. We did not even have a health sector. We only had a semblance of a health sector, and I am very happy we were able to rise up to the challenges.
“It is not what will be fixed in one or two or three years. The deficit is so wide that it will take a number of years to fix it, but the most important thing is that we have started and we are on the right track. I believe if we continue on this track, Nigeria will get there at some point.
“Within two weeks, I inspected two major facilities in Lagos, a cancer centre — you need to go there; you cannot find anything better in the world — and another hospital in Lekki, and I’m opening another one in April.
“So, out of the pandemic, something has come up that is of immense benefit to Nigerians. It is unfortunate that it took that long. But it is one thing to be caught napping and not do anything about it, and it is another thing to be caught napping and fix the problem. That is what exactly we are trying to do.
“I thank the world team that brought this to fruition. I hope this partnership will endure and will not be a one-off thing. I hope it is going to be a symbiotic relationship between the house and the private sector.”
On his part, Benjamin Kalu, chairman of the committee, said the document will reposition the health sector.
He added that the committee will continue in its mandate to promote relevant laws that will impact lives positively.


After the lessons learned from this epidemic, we will definitely attach importance to medical and health care in the future.

The National Institutes of Health has announced the first phase of its four-year, billion-dollar initiative to learn more about why some Covid-19 survivors have long-term symptoms, even after the virus has left the body.
The group of patients is known as the "long-haulers," though the NIH is calling the condition "Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection," or PASC. (The word "sequelae" comes from Latin, meaning a condition that occurs following a disease. The word "sequel" has the same origin.)
The NIH research aims to learn how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, could possibly lead to lasting symptoms, such as profound fatigue, brain fog, headaches, fevers and shortness of breath.
The symptoms "can range from mildly annoying to actually quite incapacitating," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House Covid-19 briefing Wednesday.
"We believe that the insight we gain from this research will also enhance our knowledge of the basic biology of how humans recover from infection, and improve our understanding of other chronic post-viral syndromes and autoimmune diseases," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said in a statement Tuesday.
Congress previously allocated $1.15 billion to the NIH to study long-haulers. That money will be spent over four years. The research announced this week is the first in a series of such projects.
Researchers will be "looking at large data banks for resources, such as electronic health records and health symptoms, and they'll be studying a number of biological specimens," Fauci said.
The research initiative also hopes to answer the questions of how many Covid-19 survivors may be affected, who might be most vulnerable, as well as what the underlying cause may be for long-term symptoms.
A study from Wuhan, China, published last month found Covid-19 symptoms may linger for up to six months.
Of about 1,700 patients, 63 percent said they still had fatigue or muscle weakness six months later, and roughly a quarter reported lingering anxiety or depression, as well as trouble sleeping.
"We do not know yet the magnitude of the problem, but given the number of individuals of all ages who have been or will be infected," Collins wrote, "the public health impact could be profound."
It seems that Covid-19 will become a long-term virus in our lives. It's shocking!

Severe winter weather across the United States continues to affect the federal government’s shipments of COVID-19 vaccines to providers in Maryland and other states. This may have a significant impact on providers’ ability to hold clinics as scheduled. 
The Maryland Department of Health (MDH) has directly shared with local leaders and vaccine providers the following updates from CDC regarding federal vaccine shipments: 
Moderna vaccine: Moderna vaccines were not shipped on Monday February 15 or Tuesday February 16, and will most likely not ship today, February 17, due to adverse weather conditions. We are working with McKesson and our shipping partners to resume operations as soon as the weather abates. We anticipate a significant back log of orders for distribution once operations resume and every effort will be made to catch up as soon as possible while safely delivering the vaccines.   
Last week, a number of Moderna vaccine shipments were pulled back to the McKesson depots because they were unable to be delivered due to weather conditions. A small number of these shipments were repacked and sent out on Sunday for delivery on Monday, February 15. For the remaining shipments, McKesson will be reaching out to awardees to reschedule vaccine deliveries once weather conditions allow shipment to resume. 
Pfizer vaccine: Pfizer vaccines were not shipped out on Monday, February 15 due to weather conditions.  A limited number of Pfizer vaccine shipments were processed Tuesday February 16 and a similar plan is in effect for today, February 17.  
We appreciate your patience as we continue to monitor weather conditions and consult with our industry partners about the best approach for ensuring successful COVID-19 vaccine shipments. There is an expectation that delays related to this historic weather event will continue through this week. We will continue to update you regarding adverse weather conditions as well as how the resumption of shipping will proceed as weather permits.
Due to the severe winter weather currently impacting various parts of the country, we anticipate delays in COVID-19 vaccine shipments and deliveries. Please note that the delays have also impacted some deliveries through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program. The Federal government continues to assess weather conditions and to help mitigate potential delivery delays and cancellations.
Our goal is to ensure vaccine distribution across all jurisdictions is as stable and equitable as possible through this program, and we will continue to work closely with jurisdictions and pharmacy partners to achieve this goal. Please let your CDC regional team know if you have questions.

In Florida, Democrats are criticizing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who they claim is allowing politics to play a role in COVID-19 vaccine distribution. DeSantis became testy when questioned by reporters at a vaccination event near Lakewood Ranch, an upscale community on Florida's Gulf Coast.
The vaccination event was the latest in a series of state-sponsored clinics at retirement communities. Under DeSantis' "Seniors First" initiative, the COVID-19 vaccine is being made available to everyone age 65 and over in Florida — an estimated 4.5 million people.
According to the Bradenton Herald, DeSantis reached out to the developer of the Lakewood Ranch community, offering to use it as the site for a vaccination drive. Working with a county commissioner, the state reserved shots for residents of two ZIP codes in Manatee County that cover Lakewood Ranch and other well-to-do communities.
At a news conference, reporters peppered DeSantis with questions about the perception that he was favoring one community over another in a county where vaccinations have lagged behind the rest of the state. DeSantis responded by threatening to take the state's vaccination distribution effort elsewhere. "If Manatee County doesn't like us doing this," DeSantis said, "then we are totally fine putting this in counties that want it. We're totally happy to do that."
DeSantis said the 3,000 shots being made available for residents of Lakewood Ranch and nearby communities were in addition to the county's regular vaccine allotment. Commissioners in Manatee County expressed concern that the event favored wealthy neighborhoods over underserved communities.
Democrats immediately sent out news releases criticizing DeSantis for injecting politics into vaccine distribution. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who has suggested she may challenge DeSantis when he's up for reelection next year, said, "There is no reason that Governor DeSantis should be rationing vaccines based on political influence. This is troubling and potentially illegal." State Sen. Annette Taddeo said the governor owes residents of Manatee County an apology. She said, "Veiled threats should not and cannot be tolerated by any public official." Manny Diaz, the new head of Florida's Democratic Party, said DeSantis must stop "playing politics" with vaccine distribution. Diaz said, "Threatening retribution and less vaccine access for communities that criticize the vaccine rollout for its problems is shameful and inhumane."

MIAMI — Miami-Dade County has the largest number of seniors, Latinos, Covid-19 infections, and deaths in Florida, but it’s lagging in the number of people over 65 that are being vaccinated.
According to Florida’s data, Miami-Dade has administered the largest amount of vaccines, but an analysis of the data by Florida International University epidemiologist, Dr. Mary Jo Trepka finds the county lags others when considering population size.
Only 29.6 percent of the 65 and older population of Miami-Dade — which numbers 477,205 — has received at least one vaccine, compared to the state average of 34.5 percent, Trepka told NBC News.
Palm Beach County, where former President Donald Trump now resides, has vaccinated over 46 percent of their seniors and has a smaller size of seniors, at 358,002.
“We're trying to keep down the morbidity and mortality and until we get our seniors vaccinated at higher levels, we're not going to be able to take a big bite into hospitalizations,” Trepka said.
The state does not release data on how many vaccines are distributed to each county. Trepka cautioned there are many factors to consider, such as people crossing county lines to get a shot, and whether there is more vaccine hesitancy among communities in some counties versus others.
But county and city officials are demanding more vaccines. Miami-Dade County’s mayor Daniella Levine Cava sent a letter to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week asking him to “urgently increase the volume” of vaccines in the county.
During an invitation-only event at the White House on Friday with a bipartisan group of mayors and governors, the mayor of the city of Miami, Francis Suarez, asked for more vaccines in order to speed up the process.
Florida State Senator Annette Taddeo, a Democrat who represents an area of Miami, said the current situation was "crazy."
“We're not getting them from the governor,” Taddeo said about vaccines. "This is about fairness and making sure that we are not playing favorites.”
Taddeo said she has reached out to the White House over her concerns. One solution she says she and others believe would work is to get the vaccines directly from the federal government.
Worrying scientists is that Florida leads the nation with the B.1.1.7 variant that originated in the U.K. There are concerns the variant could accelerate the amount of cases and deaths before enough people are vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last month that B.1.1.7 could become the predominant strain in the United States by March.
Dr. Olveen Carrasquillo, chief of general medicine at the University of Miami Health System, said much of the inequity in vaccine distribution is due to poor planning at the state and federal levels, starting last year. “I’m very angry and upset we didn’t plan this three or four months ago when we should have,” said Carrasquillo.
Carrasquillo is confident that the logistical and supply issues will get solved in the next few months as more vaccines are made and distributed. But aside from that, what worries him the most is the spread of misinformation that is making some in the community fearful of getting vaccinated.
“They know how to say it, how to get people afraid," Carrasquillo said about those spreading false information about the vaccine that is scaring some into not taking it. "They know how to reach our people, and that’s what concerns me."
The resistance of the elderly is much lower than that of the young, so they need to be vaccinated to fight against Covid-19. But their needs are often ignored.

Chicago Public Schools is requiring teachers to report to their classrooms starting Monday following weeks of contentious negotiations between the school district and the city's teachers union about reopening schools amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In an effort to reach an agreement with the union, Chicago Public Schools proposed a staggered timeline for teachers and students to return for in-person learning starting Tuesday with pre-K and special education students and ending on March 1 with the return of sixth to eighth-grade students.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools officials have said that teachers included in the first group who haven’t been granted special accommodations are expected to return to school buildings on Monday, adding that those who fail to return will be deemed absent without leave and their access to school district systems will be terminated.
Both Lightfoot and officials with the country's third-largest school district — with over 350,000 students in over 640 schools — have walked back from those comments several times over the past couple of weeks, but there's still a chance that they may follow through with such warnings, a move some say could potentially trigger a teacher's union strike.
"Despite making significant compromises in an effort to reach a deal with CTU leadership, we still do not have an agreement," Chicago Public Schools tweeted Friday.
Access to staff vaccinations, remote learning accommodations in case of an outbreak, and concerns over teachers potentially exposing vulnerable family members to Covid-19 are some of the key issues in which officials and the Chicago Teachers Union still disagree on as negotiations to safely reopen schools continue.
Chicago Public Schools said that while Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines state that vaccinating staff is not imperative to safely reopening schools with mitigations in place, they are planning on vaccinating 1,500 school district employees every week. In a news release Friday, the union responded saying that educators, clerks and other school district employees are already struggling to get vaccinated "under the mayor’s 'Hunger Games' system of vaccine distribution."
Chicago Public Schools "will only commit to vaccinate about 1,500 workers per week, giving no priority to staff expected to return first or those living or working in the hardest-hit communities — while refusing to increase its share of vaccine doses as City of Chicago supply increases," the union said.
Under the proposal from Chicago Public Schools, the district will revert to remote learning for at least two weeks if "the positivity rate of CPS' surveillance testing program reaches 2.5 percent or 50 percent of school are on a 14-day operational pause."
This means that Covid-19 cases "in more than 200 schools would not be cause to consider the reinstitution of remote learning in the view of the mayor or CPS leadership," the Chicago Teachers Union said.
The school district added that teachers living with medically vulnerable family members will have access to a Covid-19 vaccine starting Monday. If they choose to get the vaccine, they will be able to work from home for two weeks after getting their first dose. Those who refuse to get the vaccine while wanting to remain home, can take unpaid leave of absence with full benefits, Chicago Public Schools said.
The union said this proposal "denies remote work accommodations to 75 percent of educators with household members at high-risk for COVID-19."

President Biden said on Thursday that he will work with allies and partners to sanction Myanmar, end the war in Yemen, admit more refugees, and protect the rights of LGBTQ people around the world, signaling his plans to chart a course away from former President Donald Trump's "America First" approach to foreign policy.
Biden did not utter Trump's name in his first foreign policy speech as president, which he delivered at the State Department in Washington, D.C. But he said he has begun to try to repair the damage he said his predecessor did to America's reputation as a leader on democracy and human rights issues.
"Over the past two weeks, I've spoken with the leaders of many of our closest friends — Canada, Mexico, the U.K., Germany, France, NATO, Japan, South Korea and Australia — to begin reforming the habits of cooperation and rebuilding the muscles of democratic alliances that have atrophied over the past few years of neglect and, I would argue, abuse," Biden said.
The president said the United States' democratic values had "come under intense pressure in recent years" and were "pushed to the brink in the last few weeks" — an allusion to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as Congress gathered to tally election results, a riot that shocked Americans and the world.
The Biden administration is trying to cool down this unstable world, especially when the new coronavirus is rampant all over the world. But from the speech, I personally don't agree that the United States is still full of self superiority. I don't know why they can be so sure that the United States can represent all mankind after this ironic presidential election.

Following initial declines, in mid 2020 a resurgence in transmission of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) occurred in the US and Europe. As COVID19 disease control efforts are re-intensified, understanding the age demographics driving transmission and how these affect the loosening of interventions is crucial. We analyze aggregated, age-specific mobility trends from more than 10 million individuals in the US and link these mechanistically to age-specific COVID-19 mortality data. We estimate that as of October 2020, individuals aged 20-49 are the only age groups sustaining resurgent SARS-CoV-2 transmission with reproduction numbers well above one, and that at least 65 of 100 COVID-19 infections originate from individuals aged 20-49 in the US. Targeting interventions – including transmission-blocking vaccines – to adults aged 20-49 is an important consideration in halting resurgent epidemics and preventing COVID-19-attributable deaths.
Following worldwide spread of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the implementation of large-scale non-pharmaceutical interventions has led to sustained declines in the number of reported SARS-CoV-2 infections and deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (1, 2). However, since mid-June 2020, the daily number of reported COVID-19 cases is resurging in Europe and North America, and surpassed in the United States alone 40,000 daily reported cases on June 26, and 100,000 on November 4 2020 (3). Demographic analyses have shown that the share of individuals aged 20-29 among reported cases increased most, suggesting that young adults may be driving re-surging epidemics (4). However reported COVID-19 case data may not be a reliable indicator of disease spread due to the large proportion of asymptomatic COVID-19, increased testing, and changing testing behavior (5). Here, we use detailed, longitudinal, and age-specific population mobility and COVID-19 mortality data to estimate how non-pharmaceutical interventions, changing contact intensities, age, and other factors have interplayed and led to resurgent disease spread. We test previous claims that resurgent COVID-19 is a result of increased spread from young adults, identify the population age groups driving SARS-CoV-2 spread across the US through October 29, 2020, and quantify changes in transmission dynamics since schools reopened.
Similar to many other respiratory diseases, the spread of SARS-CoV-2 occurs primarily through close human contact, which, at a population level, is highly structured (6). Prior to the implementation of COVID-19 interventions, contacts concentrated among individuals of similar age, were highest among school-aged children and teens, and also common between children/teens and their parents, and middle-aged adults and the elderly (6). Since the beginning of the pandemic, these contact patterns have changed substantially (7–9). In the US, the Berkeley Interpersonal Contact Study indicates that in late March 2020 after stay-at-home orders were issued, the average number of daily contacts made by a single individual, also known as contact intensity, dropped to four or fewer contacts per day (9). Data from China show that infants and school-aged children and teens had almost no contact to similarly aged children and teens in the first weeks after stay-at-home orders, and reduced contact intensities with older individuals (7). However, detailed human contact and mobility data have remained scarce, especially longitudinally, although such data are essential to better understand the engines of COVID-19 transmission (10).

Compliance is for our own safety. Everyone should abide by the COVID-19 safety protocol formulated to limit the spread of the virus.