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The Ministry of Health (MoH) yesterday confirmed that another person who was infected with COVID-19 has died, increasing the country’s death toll from the virus to 478.
The article Region Nine cook is latest confirmed COVID fatality appeared first on Stabroek News.
A November 26 letter from the presidency asked the head of Uganda's national drug authority to 'work out a mechanism' to clear the importation of the vaccines.
China has about five COVID-19 vaccine candidates at different levels of trials. It was not clear what vaccine was being imported into Uganda.
One of the frontrunners is the Sinopharm vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product, a unit of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said the vaccine has 86% efficacy, citing an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
China has used the drug to vaccinate up to a million people under its emergency use program.
On Tuesday, Morocco said it was ordering up to 10 million doses of the vaccine.
Record cases
Uganda on Monday registered 701 new COVID-19 cases, the highest-ever daily increase, bringing its national count to 23,200.
The new cases were out of the 5,578 samples tested for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said in a statement.
Tuesday's tally was 606, the second-highest ever number of new infections, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the east African country to 23,860.
Health authorities have blamed ongoing election campaigns which have drawn huge crowds for the rise in infections.
There are of course huge differences between US states and African countries, but consider for a moment that the US has one international border.
Though the US may be rich, it lacks many of the social protections found in the developed world
In Africa, if Zimbabwe and Mozambique experience severe outbreaks, it will almost certainly spill over into neighbouring countries like South Africa and Tanzania, and vice versa.
Africa needs regionally coordinated strategies that are responsive to the needs of individual states
Africa has many vulnerable populations - poverty, hunger and conflict put millions of Africans at risk - and a huge informal sector that won't be easy to protect from the negative economic impacts of lockdowns.
COVID-19 is a fake news bonanza in the US; Africa must be ready for attempts to exploit the uncertainty
The pandemic is also stimulating structural drivers of instability that increase the potential for violence, crime and political unrest.
COVID-19 is a fake news bonanza in the US, and Africa needs to be ready for attempts to benefit from the uncertainty by pushing false narratives.
The challenges faced by African nations during the coronavirus pandemic are about much more than a rapidly spreading virus, American aid officials say.
That may seem like a large sum, but USAID’s senior coordinator for Africa, Christopher Runyan, enumerated the challenges they have to cover with those funds — especially amid predictions that a viral spike is on its way for African nations.
“Our primary concerns in Africa now are responding to the disease; the food security issues and disruptions in access to food; economic and employment impacts in Africa; and concerns for democratic backsliding and the loss of progress in other development sectors.
\"Weak health system capacity, urban density with poor sanitation, and other challenges make Africa particularly vulnerable to a large-scale outbreak.”
... And so I think the malaria coordinators in each country, as well as international partners, are going to great lengths to think through how we can adapt our delivery of care in the COVID-19 environment.”
Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that a drug can improve COVID-19 survival: A cheap, widely available steroid reduced deaths by up to one third in severely ill hospitalized patients.
The results were announced Tuesday and the British government immediately authorized the drug’s use across the United Kingdom for coronavirus patients like those who did well in the study.
The study, led by the University of Oxford, was a large, strict test that randomly assigned 2,104 patients to get the drug, dexamethasone, and compared them with 4,321 patients getting only usual care.
Remdesivir shortened the time to recovery for severely ill hospitalized patients by 31% to 11 days on average versus 15 days for those just given usual care, in a study led by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The study enrolled more than 11,000 patients in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who were given either standard of care or that plus one of several treatments: dexamethasone; the HIV combo drug lopinavir-ritonavir; the antibiotic azithromycin; the anti-inflammatory drug tocilizumab; or plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 that contains antibodies to fight the virus.
Chief Medical Officer in the Ministry of Health and Wellness Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie says the Ministry is working to address issues with COVID-19 testing. Bisasor-McKenzie has indicated that there has been a drop in testing over the past few...
So it was this past week when he took very personally a scientific study that should give pause to anyone thinking of following Trump’s lead and ingesting a potentially risky drug for the coronavirus.
On Friday, a study published by the journal Lancet suggested that hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, with or without an antibiotic, did not help hospitalized patients and was tied to a greater risk of death or heart rhythm problems.
THE FACTS: There’s no evidence of a political plot at the Department of Veterans Affairs or elsewhere to produce a study pointing to poor outcomes for veterans who took hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 in a bid to make Trump look bad.
TRUMP, on the study of VA hospital data: “If you look at that phony report that was put in, that report on the hydroxyl — was given to people that were in extraordinarily bad condition — extraordinarily bad, people that were dying.”
TRUMP: “There was a false study done where they gave it to very sick people — extremely sick people, people that were ready to die.
The article ‘Tis the season appeared first on Stabroek News.
Pompeo said on Wednesday that US authorities have made multiple formal requests for viral isolates and information about “patient zero”.
“Trying to obtain the earliest viral RNA in the pandemic is an important endeavour, but I just don’t understand the need to do that with the State Department first, and publicly with conspiracy theories that are still around,” said David Larsen, a public health professor at Syracuse University who has studied the spread of malaria and other infectious diseases.
Larsen said that there were other reasons for China to share the viral isolates beyond tracing the pandemic’s initial path, but argued that such exchanges would likely have been more productive if left to the two countries’ scientists instead of the US State Department.
“From a future prevention standpoint, it’s important to understand where the virus came from,” Larsen said.
“Our science is not very good at figuring out which viruses circulating in other animals might potentially jump over to humans and then become able to circulate among humans.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he is taking a malaria drug to protect against the coronavirus, despite warnings from his own government that it should only be administered for COVID-19 in a hospital or research setting due to potentially fatal side effects.
Trump has spent weeks pushing hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure or prophylaxis for COVID-19 against the cautionary advice of many of his administration’s top medical professionals.
The White House physician, Dr. Sean Conley, said in a statement released through the White House press office that, after “numerous discussions” with Trump about the evidence for and against using hydroxychloroquine, “we concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.”
The Food and Drug Administration warned health professionals last month that the drug should not be used to treat COVID-19 outside of hospital or research settings, due to sometimes fatal side effects.
Hydroxychloroquine can cause potentially serious heart rhythm problems even in healthy people, but “it’s hard to infer” that Trump’s artery plaque, revealed in tests from his 2018 physical, makes the drug especially dangerous for him, Aronoff said.
External Relations Minister, Mbella Mbella held an audience with United States Ambassador to Cameroon, Peter Henry Barlerin on May 15, 2020.
Cooperation ties between Cameroon and the United States of America came under review in an audience External Relations Minister, Mbella Mbella granted to the US Ambassador to Cameroon, Peter Henry Barlerin on May 15, 2020.
Speaking to the press after the audience, the US diplomat said he thanked the Minister of External Relations for the collaboration in helping US citizens return to their country.
\"First of all, I wanted to come here and thank the Minister of External Relations for all of his cooperation that he has shown in helping us to evacuate so many American citizens and the legal permanent residence from Cameroon.
Peter Henry Barlerin further stated he discussed health cooperation with Minister Mbella Mbella.
Madagascar's President Andry Rajoelina this week announced the start of clinical trials of an injectable solution based on extracts of the artemisia plant, a herbal treatment the Malagasy leader has been promoting for treatment of Covid-19.
Nevertheless, the World Health Organisation at the start of May told RFI that they were yet to receive any data from Madagascar about the Covid-Organics product and its effectiveness against presidency somewhat backtracked over claims about starting an artemisia clinical trial, describing a misunderstanding by the media about what Rajoelina was saying.
\"The second protocol concerns Covid-Organics, the improved traditional remedy, developed on the basis of WHO guidelines for clinical studies of traditional medicine in Africa,\" Sahondrarimalala added, referring to the artemisia herbal tea Rajoelina has been promoting.
No injections of artemisia
The third protocol, which is the one involved in clinical trials, is a combined treatment for Covid-19 patients, said Sahondrarimalala.
These comments from an official within Madagascar's presidency appear to directly contradict Rajoelina's announcement about clinical trials on an injectable artemisia-based product.
Dear Editor,
I make these brief comments hoping that it may catch the eyes of the President and his cabinet.
The article Whatever happened to the shirtjacs? appeared first on Stabroek News.
A 19-year-old man has died after a missed malaria diagnosis, a week after testing positive for Covid-19.
Nigerian health authorities said they were battling a suspected outbreak of yellow fever in two southern areas that local media said might have left dozens dead.
The article Politikles appeared first on Stabroek News.
Scientists in Nigeria have discovered a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus, which has infected over 20,000 people, killing 518 others in that country with 6,878 recoveries.
“We are glad that a vaccine that will provide a solution to a global problem like Coronavirus pandemic is coming from the garden.
“It is our passion to be a solution provider to such a global pandemic, and we are ready to throw our weights behind the team and make the vaccine a reality,” Prof. Solomon Adebola, the acting Vice-Chancellor of Adeleke University in Nigeria, said of the discovery.
Prof. Julius Oloke, the Head, Coordinating Unit of the Research Group and Vice-Chancellor of Precious Cornerstone University, Ibadan, added: “It’s a pleasure that we have come together to produce a vaccine at a time that the world is in need of solution to a ravaging pandemic.”
Madagascar launched a herbal cure for the contagion, which the WHO urged caution in consuming as the world continues to grapple with the devastations caused by the novel coronavirus and the heightened race to find a vaccine.
[New Zimbabwe] Illegal Covid-19 testing sites are mushrooming in the country as Zimbabweans intending to travel outside the country seek fake test papers to cross the national borders.
The earliest inhabitants of Cameroon were probably the Bakas (Pygmies). They still inhabit the forests of the south and east provinces. Bantu speakers originating in the Cameroonian highlands were among the first groups to move out before other invaders. During the late 1770s and early 1800s, the Fulani, a pastoral Islamic people of the western Sahel, conquered most of what is now northern Cameroon, subjugating or displacing its largely non-Muslim inhabitants.
Arrival of the Europeans:
Although the Portuguese arrived on Cameroons coast in the 1500s, malaria prevented significant European settlement and conquest of the interior until the late 1870s, when large supplies of the malaria suppressant, quinine, became available. The early European presence in Cameroon was primarily devoted to coastal trade and the acquisition of slaves. The northern part of Cameroon was an important part of the Muslim slave trade network. The slave trade was largely suppressed by the mid-19th century. Christian missions established a presence in the late 19th century and continue to play a role in Cameroonian life.
Beginning in 1884, all of present-day Cameroon and parts of several of its neighbors became the German colony of Kamerun, with a capital first at Buea and later at Yaounde. After World War I, this colony was partitioned between Britain and France under a June 28, 1919 League of Nations mandate.
France gained the larger geographical share, transferred outlying regions to neighboring French colonies, and ruled the rest from Yaounde. Britains territory--a strip bordering Nigeria from the sea to Lake Chad, with an equal population--was ruled from Lagos.
In 1955, the outlawed Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), based largely among the Bamileke and Bassa ethnic groups, began an armed struggle for independence in French Cameroon.
This rebellion continued, with diminishing intensity, even after independence. Estimates of death from this conflict vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.
French Cameroon achieved
Run by a Cameroon-raised, Harvard-trained molecular biologist, the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) has been at the forefront in the fight of killer diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever – and now Covid-19.
Senegal will continue treating COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, a senior health official said on Wednesday, despite a recent study indicating that the anti-malarial drug is ineffective and potentially harmful.
Authorities in the West African state opted to provide consenting patients with the drug early on during its coronavirus outbreak, citing promising clinical results.
Abdoulaye Bousso, who heads Senegal’s Centre for Health Emergency Operations, told AFP on Wednesday that the country’s hydroxychloroquine treatment programme would nonetheless continue, without offering further details.
The infectious-diseases doctor who is spearheading Senegal’s treatment of COVID-19 patients, Moussa Seydi, did not respond to requests for comment.
The World Health Organization said on Monday it had temporarily suspended clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus following the Lancet study.
