The President of Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) in University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Dr Adedayo Williams and a security man in charge of vehicle tally distribution has tested positive for coronavirus.
Williams said this in a WhatsApp message he sent to his colleagues on Monday.
UCH spokesperson Mr Toye Akinrinlola also confirmed the news.
Read Also: Four Kano COVID-19 Taskforce members test positive
The development brings to three the number of UCH workers that has contracted the virus.
William said: “Good afternoon, dear colleagues and friends.
“Having been on the field caring for others, I thought it wise to subject myself to a voluntary screening for COVID-19. The result turned out to be positive on Saturday evening, April18.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Geoff Moore/Shutterstock (9962488v)
Richard Austin Quest CNN travel reporter reporting live from World Travel Market
World Travel Market, London, UK - 05 Nov 2018
Cable News Network (CNN) presenter and journalist Richard Quest has tested positive for coronavirus.
Quest disclosed this in a tweet on his verified handle.
He however said he has only experienced a few symptoms of the disease.
“I have caught coronavirus; I’m blessed I have few symptoms: just a cough.
“I’m saving my thoughts and prayers for those less fortunate, stay in and protect lives,” he tweeted.
A five-year-old girl has died after contracting meningitis, as a rare complication of coronavirus.
Little Skylar Herbert told her parents she had a bad headache about a month ago, but it wasn’t a symptom of coronavirus.
A trip to her GP saw him test for strep throat, she was given antibiotics and sent home to rest.
Mum LaVondria Herbert, 46, told the Detroit News : “She had been crying all night and saying the headache would not go away.
“We called the doctor back, and they told us that it takes the medication 48 hours to kick in and to give it some time, but because she was crying so bad, I told my husband we needed to take her to emergency, because I just didn’t know.”
She and husband Ebbie, are first responders in Detroit, so took their daughter to the Beaumont Royal Oak hospital.
Skylar tested positive for Covid-19 and was released the next day to recover at home, but the family arrived back at the hospital the next day when her dad Ebbie began having shortness of breath and coughing.
Mrs Herbert said: “Me and Skylar waited in the car, but out of nowhere, Skylar began complaining about her head hurting again and then she just threw up.”
Although her temperature was now 100°F, she was shivering, and suddenly had a seizure.
The family rushed her back into the hospital and little Skylar ended up in intensive care.
She was placed on a ventilator for two weeks, but she never opened her eyes again.
Skylar had developed meningitis, a rare complication of the coronavirus, which caused swelling of brain tissue and a lesion on her frontal lobe.
Speaking yesterday Mrs Herbert said: “We decided to take her off the ventilator today because her improvement had stopped, the doctors told us that it was possible she was brain dead, and we basically just knew she wasn’t coming back to us.”
A spokesman for Beaumont Health confirmed Skylar’s death, issuing the following statement: “The loss of a child, at any time, under any circumstances, is a tragedy.
“We are heartbroken that Covid-19 has taken the life of a child.
“We extend our deepest sympathy to Skylar’s family and all others who have lost a loved one to this virus.”
Paying tribute to her daughter, LaVondria said: “She was the type of girl that would just run up to you and jump in your arms and hug you.
“It didn’t matter what she was doing, she would stop what she was doing and tell me she loved me like 20 times a day.”
epa06747281 Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), attends a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, 18 May 2018. The WHO Director-General answered questions ahead of the World Health Assembly and following the meeting of an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. EPA-EFE/VALENTIN FLAURAUD
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday insisted that there was no approved vaccine in Nigeria or any part of Africa for COVID-19 saying researches are still ongoing on the deadly viral disease.
WHO Immunisation Team Lead, Dr Fiona Braka, spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the efforts of the world body on the reported vaccines for the deadly virus.
Braka said COVID-19, being a new disease, has no ready vaccines, adding that public safety was the key consideration of WHO campaign for now.
“COVID-19 is a new disease, and as such, there are no ready vaccines available to be deployed for the control of the pandemic.
“However, a lot of research and scientific works are ongoing to develop vaccines, but these usually take time to ensure that it is safe for use in the wider population and also effective for control of the pandemic.
“Public safety is a key consideration in this process,” the WHO team lead said.
Braka said that the claims of vaccines developed for the COVID-19 were untrue and not to the knowledge of the WHO.
“WHO is not aware of vaccine for COVID-19 in Nigeria.
“There is a large scientific study (clinical trial) involving many countries to review the effectiveness of some drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 going on at the moment.
“The result of this clinical trial will help understand the efficacy of these drugs and may inform the review of the case management guidelines,” she said.
On the assessment of Nigeria’s performance in curbing the spread of COVID-19, Braka said that the world health body partnership with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) had been helpful.
“Nigerian Government through the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and supported by WHO had developed a preparedness plan for COVID-19 and was implementing this plan when the first case was reported.
“A network of five COVID testing laboratories was set up before the confirmation of the first case and has since been expanded to six additional laboratories over the past two weeks, making a total of 11 laboratories currently.
“From the onset of the outbreak, WHO has developed clinical guidance with input from clinicians around the globe, including in Nigeria.
“These resources include the updated Clinical Management Guidance for COVID-19, the Clinical Care training materials, and the Global COVID-19 Clinical Data Platform, the data tool which makes it possible for WHO to collect core clinical data from hospitalised patients to inform understanding of COVID-19.
“The guidance is continually reviewed, as more evidence become available.
The government has scaled up isolation facilities capacity at state level to ensure readiness to receive COVID patients,” she said.
Braka said that there would be more close observation, while the guidelines of operations of all the agencies assisting in the curbing of COVID-19 would be updated.
“The guidance of the clinical data platform will be continually reviewed, as more evidence become available.
“The government has scaled up isolation facilities capacity at state level to ensure readiness to receive COVID patients and all these helped with the containment of the first cluster of cases.
“With the return of more Nigerians from countries where the outbreak was reported, more cases have been reported and these have been more challenging to contain.
“The government at national and state levels have provided leadership for the response and more needs to be done at the state level as the cases continue to increase,” she said.
Braka, however, listed the key areas of interventions for curbing COVID-19 to include non-pharmaceutical, such as social distancing, surveillance, contact tracing, among others.
“The key areas of interventions required now are the non-pharmaceutical interventions like social distancing, handwashing and respiratory hygiene.
“Others, in addition to rigorous surveillance, are case identification, laboratory diagnosis, contact tracing and isolation and care for all confirmed cases.
“Physical distancing is one of the recommended strategies for preventing human to human transmission.
“The lockdown does facilitate physical distancing and is a welcome intervention.
“However, physical distancing alone will not stop the spread, but needs to be combined with other recommended strategies: testing, isolation of patients, contact tracing and quarantine,” she said.
The WHO official said the United Nation (UN) in Nigeria had launched a basket fund to help fight the deadly viral infection, adding that other donor agencies had also launched trust fund intervention.
“The United Nations in Nigeria has set up a Basket Fund that was launched by the SGF (Secretary to the Government of Federation) last week. Resources from the Basket Fund are supporting critical aspects of the response.
“Donor agencies and governments have been contributing to support WHO’s work in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic globally.
“Funds have been made available to WHO Nigeria through the Regional Office and Headquarters in Geneva which is financing the WHO’s current support to the response in Nigeria.
“We are also grateful to other partners who have supported WHO, Nigeria directly,” she said.
Braka said that WHO had also deployed some team of experts to other African countries.
“WHO is supporting countries globally with response to the pandemic. From the WHO Regional Office for Africa, four experts have been deployed to Nigeria currently.
“There is also remote support provided by experts from the WHO Headquarters in Geneva and the Regional Office in Brazzaville.
“These are in additional to an excellent team of public health experts who already work in all 36 states and the FCT, in the different WHO, Nigeria offices.
“WHO’s extensive Polio Programme resources have already been re-purposed and deployed, and have been crucial in supporting all affected states to mount an initial response, she said.
Braka said that states that had yet to report any confirmed case, there were resources engaged in preparatory activities and surveillance.
“WHO will continue to support Nigeria throughout the response and even during the recovery phase, she said.
Jigawa and Borno States have recorded their first cases of coronavirus.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control made this known on Sunday night via its Twitter handle.
It stated that the two states recorded their first cases while the total cases in the country rise to 627.
While two cases were reported in Jigawa, one was reported in Borno.
“Eighty-six new cases of COVID-19 have been reported; 70 in Lagos, 7 in FCT, 3 in Katsina, 3 in Akwa Ibom, 1 in Jigawa, 1 in Bauchi, 1 in Borno.
“One case previously reported in Kano has been transferred to Jigawa state. Therefore, the total number of confirmed cases in Kano is 36 as at the 19th of April 2020.
“As at 11:50 pm 19th April, there are 627 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in Nigeria,” it stated, adding that the total recoveries in the country were 170 while the total deaths were 21.
A breakdown of cases by states showed that Lagos has 376 cases, FCT has 88 infections, Kano has 36, Osun, 20; Oyo, 16; Edo, 15; Ogun, 12; Kwara, 9; Katsina, 12; Bauchi, 7; Kaduna, 6; Akwa Ibom, 9; Delta, 4; Ekiti- 3, Ondo, 3; Enugu, 2; Rivers, 2; Niger, 2; Benue, 1, Anambra, 1; Borno, 1; and Jigawa, 2.
The Federal Government has disclosed that following new revelations regarding the maltreatment of Nigerians in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province of China, it will immediately begin the process of evacuation of the affected people.
This is even as the government said it will take the necessary measures to ensure compensation for the Nigerians who were involved in the recent maltreatment in China.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, who made the disclosure in Abuja, said he summoned the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr Zhou Pingjian, for the second time since the reports surfaced in the media to register Nigeria’s displeasure over the development.
Onyeama explained that after the government’s earlier position on the matter, new revelations showed that the issue was more than what the government thought it was.
Onyeama further said the Nigerian Ambassador to China, Baba Ahmed Jidda, as well as other African ambassadors in China, met with the Chinese Foreign Ministry and expressed their concern and made a number of demands of the Chinese Government, including the insistence on the respect for the rights and dignity of Africans and Nigerians in Guangdong.
Onyeama, however, said the Government of China was committed to looking into the matter and ensuring that there will be no maltreatment of any Nigerian or Africans in Guangdong Province, in Guangzhou or anywhere else in China.
“After we had made a statement in the media, I continued to receive information from Nigerians in China and I engaged directly with our officials in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province and people who were right on the ground.
“And I must say that contrary to what we had believed, that the situation was now fully under control and stabilised and there were no longer any issues, it became apparent that there were still, very distressing incidences and that it was almost as if it was an institutional attack on the rights and dignity of Nigerians and Africans there.
“So, as I said, with confirmation from people who were there, I again, invited today, the Chinese Ambassador and presented these facts to him. I said look, contrary to what was agreed, to the promises that had been made and guarantees given, that the situation does not seem to have ameliorated and this was totally unacceptable.
“That we have stories of Nigerians who had been evicted from their residence, who were unable to get back in; hotels where they had gone to be isolated, they had been moved and put in more expensive hotels and Nigerians not being served when they went to restaurants and to shopping malls and so forth. And this was totally unacceptable and something needed to be done,” Onyeama said.
Speaking further, Onyeama said even though the narratives were conflicting, even sometimes among Africans in the area, but that there was clearly the main narrative, a persuasive narrative of unacceptable treatment of Nigerians and other Africans in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.
He added that even though there was an effort to contain an outbreak of COVID-19, including some Africans who came into the country and tested positive, that was absolutely no reason whatsoever to completely trespass on the rights and dignity of Nigerians and Africans in the city.
“I spoke to some of our people there in Guangzhou. And what do we do? And where do we go from here? Quite a lot of them, of course, said that they just want to come home and we are putting in place as quickly as possible, the mechanisms to start bringing them home. That clearly is the immediate solution here,” Onyeama added.
The world’s biggest trial of drugs to treat Coronavirus patients has begun in the United Kingdom at unprecedented speed, and hopes to have some answers within weeks.
According to The Guardian, the Recovery trial has recruited more than 5,000 patients in 165 NHS hospitals around the UK in a month, ahead of similar trials in the US and Europe, which have a few hundred.
“This is by far the largest trial in the world,” said Peter Horby, professor of emerging infectious diseases and global health at Oxford University, who is leading it.
He has previously led Ebola drug trials in west Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The Recovery team expects to be the first to have definitive data. “We’re guessing some time in June we may get the results,” said Horby.
“If it is really clear that there are benefits, an answer will be available quicker.” But he warned that in the case of Covid-19, there would be no “magic bullet”.
WHO investigates reports of recovered coronavirus patients testing positive again
Reuters
On Friday, South Korea reported that 91 coronavirus patients being considered for discharge tested positive for the virus again.
The director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the virus may have been “reactivated” rather than the patients being re-infected.
It remains unclear why the patients tested positive after initially testing negative for COVID-19 — WHO announced Saturday that it would be investigating the reports.
“As COVID-19 is a new disease, we need more epidemiological data to draw any conclusions,” WHO told Reuters.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Saturday that it is investigating reports that coronavirus patients who initially tested negative tested positive for the virus days later.
“We are aware of these reports of individuals who have tested negative for COVID-19 using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing and then after some days testing positive again,” a WHO spokesperson told Reuters”.
On Friday, South Korea reported that 91 coronavirus patients they believed to have recovered from the disease tested positive for the virus again.
Guidelines from WHO on clinical management recommended that a clinically recovered COVID-19 patient should test negative for the virus twice, with tests conducted at least 24 hours apart, before being discharged from the hospital.
The COVID-19 patients in South Korea were being considered for discharge after testing negative for the disease — however, tests administered later showed positive results.
South Korean health officials said they would be launching epidemiological investigations to determine what was behind the trend.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, the director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a news briefing that the virus may have “reactivated” in the patients, as opposed to the patients being re-infected again, Bloomberg reported.
“While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this,” Jeong said Monday. “There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another.”
The number of patients who were believed to have been cleared of the coronavirus but later tested positive jumped from 51 on Monday to 91 on Friday. Shortly after, WHO announced it would also be looking into the recent COVID-19 trend in South Korea as well.
“We are closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases. It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly,” a spokesperson for WHO told Reuters in a statement.
According to WHO, current studies show that patients with mild COVID-19 experience a period of about two weeks between the onset of symptoms and clinical recovery. But it remains unclear why these patients are testing positive after they were believed to have recovered from COVID-19.
“As COVID-19 is a new disease, we need more epidemiological data to draw any conclusions,” the statement added.
More than 390,000 people worldwide have recovered from the coronavirus, according to data collected by John Hopkins.
Infectious disease experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, believe that “people who recover [from COVID-19] are really protected against re-infection.”
People who have been infected develop antibodies that can “probably fight off the coronavirus if they encounter it again,” making them temporarily immune to the coronavirus, according to Business Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen. However, it’s unclear how long the protection lasts, she added.
Recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci said people who recovered from the coronavirus will likely be immune should a second wave of infection spread in the early fall. But preliminary studies about coronavirus immunity show that not all recovered patients develop the antibodies needed to protect ourselves from the virus.
Africa could become the next epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
UN officials also say it is likely the pandemic will kill at least 300,000 people in Africa and push nearly 30 million into poverty.
The past week in Africa has seen a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.
There have been almost 1,000 deaths and almost 19,000 infections across Africa, so far much lower rates than in parts of Europe and the US.
The UN Economic Commission for Africa – which warned 300,000 could die – called for a $100bn (£80bn) safety net for the continent, including halting external debt payments.
The WHO says the virus appears to be spreading away from African capitals.
It has also highlighted that the continent lacks ventilators to deal with a pandemic.
More than a third of Africa’s population lacks access to adequate water supplies and nearly 60% of urban dwellers live in overcrowded slums – conditions where the virus could thrive.
How bad is the situation in Africa?
There are almost 19,000 confirmed cases in Africa and at least 970 confirmed deaths across the whole continent, which has a population of about 1.3 billion.
North Africa is the worst affected region. Algeria, Egypt and Morocco have all had more than 2,000 cases and at least 100 deaths. Algeria has had the most deaths, with 348.
Elsewhere, South Africa has also had more than 2,000 cases, with 48 deaths, while the continent’s most populous nation, Nigeria, has had 442 cases and 13 confirmed deaths out of a population of some 200 million.
Why are there fewer cases compared with Europe and the US?
WHO Africa director Dr Matshidiso Moeti told BBC Global Health correspondent Tulip Mazumdar that international travel played a part.
“If you look at the proportion of people who travel, Africa has fewer people who are travelling internationally,” she said.
But now that the virus is in within Africa, she says that her organisation is acting under the assumption that it will spread just as quickly as elsewhere.
