Novel CoronaVirus

A flight carrying 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India landed in Ghana’s capital Accra, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), said in a joint statement.

The leader of Myanmar’s junta has called for energetic efforts to revive an ailing economy, state media reported on Tuesday, as Western countries considered more sanctions to press the generals to shun a violent crackdown on democracy protests

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering a staged exit from COVID-19 lockdown that would see pubs and restaurants reopen in May, and hospitality and domestic holiday industries not fully reopening until July, the Daily Mail reported.

The United Nations’ health agency has listed the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and drugmaker AstraZeneca for emergency use, days after a panel of experts recommended the use of the products in settings where variants of the coronavirus are circulating.

The highly infectious variant of the novel coronavirus that is predominant in the United Kingdom may be up to 70 percent more deadly than previous strains, according to a report by the government’s scientific advisers.

It is "extremely unlikely" the novel coronavirus came from a laboratory incident in China, according to a joint mission investigating the origins of the pandemic.

A Russian expert on Saturday said Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market may have made it possible for the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) to spread, but it does not mean the virus originated there.

There was no accidental leakage of disease from a Chinese laboratory with a history of studying coronaviruses, an international team investigating the origins of COVID-19 has been told.

Kogi State and its Governor Yahaya Bello have become serious cause for worry for the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19.

The paramount ruler of Kaltungo chiefdom in Gombe State, (Mai Kaltungo), Engr Sale Muhammed, has called on governments and other actors, at state and federal levels, to activate more sensitisation campaigns to carry Nigerians along in the ongoing fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Producers group CIVC said on Tuesday that sales of bubbly dropped 18% in 2020 by volume and the pandemic would continue to weigh on demand in the first half of this year, although the extent of last year’s decline was less than initially forecast and there was some year-end cheer.

Nigeria’s commercial capital city of Lagos is the epicenter of the nation’s novel coronavirus outbreak; with over 44,000 of the nation’s total confirmed COVID-19 infections of 121, 566 as of January 24, 2021.

Global life insurers are taking steps to curb payouts stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, including long-term health consequences that are not fully understood, industry sources told Reuters.

The Vice-Chancellor, University of Lagos, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, has appealed to public-spirited Nigerians to assist indigent candidates to get tablets, as the university gets set for the non-physical post-UTME test.

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Tunisian cities on Saturday to protest police repression, corruption and poverty, following several nights of unrest marked by clashes and arrests.

United States President Joe Biden has signed a string of executive orders, memorandums and directives that will reverse some of his predecessor Donald Trump’s most divisive policies, including rescinding the so-called “Muslim ban”, rejoining the Paris climate accord, and ending the process to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Residents of the ancestral Indian village of Kamala Harris celebrated her inauguration as U.S. vice president on Wednesday by setting off firecrackers and distributing food.

More than 400,000 people in the United States have died as a result of the novel coronavirus, Johns Hopkins University said on Tuesday, as many states around the country struggle with mounting infections and hospitalisations.

The Federal Government dominated capital raising at the fixed income segment of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in 2020, raising over N2.36 trillion.

The Nigeria Centre For Disease Control (NCDC) on Monday called on the private-owned laboratories in Nigeria to support the country’s testing capacity for the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).

The 82-year-old president of Guinea, Alpha Conde, has received his first dose of a vaccine against the coronavirus, part of a scheme mainly involving government members, a source close to his office said Saturday.

The Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union has said students of tertiary institutions have stayed at home for too long over the outbreak of COVID-19, an acute respiratory ailment caused by the novel coronavirus, that has held the entire world to ransom since January last year.