By Lizzy Okoji

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama says Nigeria is making efforts and hopeful to get the coronavirus vaccines to the country by end of February.

Onyeama disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

He said Nigeria was expecting vaccines from the People’s Republic of China, a strategic partner of Nigeria and from other countries.

“What we are engaging with China is in the area of vaccines for COVID-19, so we are also looking to import, to acquire significant vaccines from China and other partners too.

“I think in the short immediate time that is an area we will need China.

“They have cooperated with us with regards to personal protective equipment and other things in our COVID response.

“So we are now at the stage of the vaccine and we are hoping that we can get some support from them in that area.

“There are different ways we are expecting to get the vaccines. There is the bilateral way as a country that we are negotiating.

“Then we have the framework of the African Union collectively as a continent, they are also engagements to receive vaccine.

“The African Union has made some headway, more than 400 million as what has been agreed to. So we were hoping that at the end of January we would have started receiving the vaccines.

“But I think almost certainly by the middle of February we should have started receiving,” Onyeama said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that in January when the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Nigeria, the Federal Government opened discussions with China to have access to its COVID-19 vaccines.

Nigerians have, however, been expectant of vaccines, especially as the cases of COVID-19 in the country continues to surge. (NAN)

By Lizzy Okoji

Venezuelan ambassador to Nigeria David Caraballo says President Nicolas Maduro is keen on strengthening relations between Venezuela and other countries amid sanctions imposed by the U.S.

Caraballo told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Abuja that the desire would help promote trade relations between Nigeria and Venezuela.

Venezuela’s economy is tightly tied to oil, its biggest export.

The South American country has the biggest oil reserves in the world while Nigeria stands as the sixth largest producer of oil in the world.

In 2017, Venezuela’s oil reserves totaled 302.81 billion barrels, according to data from OPEC.

On Aug. 6, 2019, former President of the U.S, Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing new economic sanctions on Venezuela, a mechanism that affected the country’s economy and its citizens.

Tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. can be traced back to when Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor, first became president of Venezuela in 1999.

During his campaign for president, Chavez villainised the U.S. and other countries he felt were taking advantage of Venezuela.

However, Caraballo says the focus of President Maduro’s administration and the new parliament is to restore Venezuela’s relations with the rest of the world and multilateral institutions with new legislations like the anti-blockade law.

He said that Venezuela was also keen on establishing bi-national commerce chambers with Nigeria to promote direct economic relations with the Nigerian government and the private sector.

According to the envoy, for this to be possible, Venezuela is putting measures in place to end the economic blockade.

“This anti-blockade law has different goals and purposes.

“One is to create the conditions, the regulations, the mechanics to prevent the possibility of the United States to attack the foreign investments.

“Foreign participation, the trade and commerce between some companies, countries, and Venezuela.

“These laws cover all the areas we need to attend to, to prevent these situations.

“And to guarantee that if for example one Nigerian company has relations with one Venezuelan company, this law guarantees that the conditions to this relations are normal and effective for both parties.

“And this can be in the situation of Nigeria, China or any country or company.

“And now the new parliament has the obligation to compliment these constitutional laws.

“They can approve new laws, new regulations to cover all the sectors of the international trade and commerce under this umbrella,” Caraballo said.

Caraballo added that the Maduro administration was not relenting in efforts to mitigate the impact of the economic blockade on Venezuela as a lot of measures were being put in place alongside the anti-blockade law.

The envoy said even with the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), the government still ensured that citizens did not suffer hardship as more than 7 million Venezuelans received food and social protection bonuses every month.

“With the anti-blockade law, with the new parliament, with the new electoral process for the governors, with the economic measures we hope to recover the internal capacities.

“With the crypto currency system, with the new financial mechanicswe can continue working to solve the impact of the economic cohesive measure of the blockade and sanctions of the United States.

“With the situation of the COVID-19, medical system, the social protection., in the political level, we are working with this new institution, in the economical level we are working with the anti-blockade laws.

“And with other measures, with China, Russia, Cuba, Turkey, India, and other countries allies of Venezuela.

“We remain committed to working in the social protection level.

“Last year, we completed the construction of more than 400,000 houses in less than ten years we built three million, four hundred thousand houses for the people.

“Every week, depending on the cases, we send money to the elderly, women, and students to guarantee the necessary economic assistance for their family or personal necessities.

“The social protection programme is working, the food supplement that we organise attend to seven millions of families every month, they receive food and social protection bonus.

“Direct economic subsidy and also the other actions promoted for the government to support the situation,” Caraballo said.

He called for the unfreezing of Venezuela’s accounts and assets in many countries to enable the country make progress. (NAN)

LIZ/CHOM/YEE

By Lizzy Okoji

Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama says with Nigeria’s Amb. Bankole Adeoye as the African Union’s (AU) Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, the fight against terror in the ECOWAS sub-region will be strengthened.

Onyeama said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

The Minister said he was optimistic that the Nigerian ambassador, who the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government has endorsed, would win the election to the AU position coming up on Feb. 6 and Feb. 7.

“Nigeria has a lot to benefit  because we can leverage more easily on the African Union to also support our fight against terrorism in West Africa, including Nigeria.

“And to support more coherently the multinational Joint Task Force of which Nigeria is a leading member, a coalition of countries against Boko Haram.

“So the very concrete benefit is that we would now be able to have greater cohesion between what the African Union is doing on peace and security and what ECOWAS and Nigeria is doing.

“And I think that is something that is not as strong as it should be now,” Onyeama said.

Onyeama described Adeoye’s candidacy as a unique development given the fact that  the ECOWAS leaders “have thrown all their weight behind him and endorsed him as ECOWAS’ candidate.”

“It has been very good, a unique situation there because all the ECOWAS countries had candidates, most of them very good candidates.

“And at the level of the Presidents of all those countries they agreed to withdraw all their candidates and just present Nigeria almost as a sub-regional candidate for the position of political Affairs, Peace and Security.

“Now, one of the main reasons being for West Africa, Peace and Security is number one priority and they also feel that Nigeria as a country has the wherewithal to take advantage of that position as commissioner, to make a difference for not just West Africa but for Africa.

“So that is very very good and the voting is today and tomorrow.

“So we are hopeful because the other sub-regions, Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa also have candidates. So we still have to battle.

“But the fact that we have the whole of West Africa behind us gives us a very good chance of securing this position,” Onyeama added.

Adeoye is Nigeria’s former member to the African and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

He was Ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti between 2017 to 2020.

Adeoye was ranked overall best candidate in an independent assessment by the AU panel of eminent Africans. (NAN)

Two tigers escaped from a zoo in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, with one of the animals killing an employee who tried to stop them, according to local media reports on Saturday.

The white tigers ran away from Zinka Zoo in Singkawang district on Friday after a rain-triggered landslide and subsequent flooding damaged their enclosure, according to zoo official Elka Surya.

“The landslide created a big hole in the tigers’ enclosure, allowing them to escape,’’ Elka said, according to the state Antara news agency.

An employee tried to stop the tigers but was attacked and killed, Elka said.

One of the tigers was shot and killed on Saturday morning, CNN Indonesia reported.

A team is searching for the other one, it added.

“We used a tranquillizer but it didn’t work. We shot it because we feared it was running to residential areas,’’ local conservation chief Sadtata Noor Adirahmanta told the broadcaster. (dpa/NAN)

Myanmar resumed the vaccination programme against COVID-19 across the country on Friday, according to an announcement from the Health and Sports Ministry.

The announcement said the country started vaccinating about 103,142 front line medical staff and volunteers since Jan. 27, in the first phase of the nationwide vaccination programme.

The group of people who will be given priority to be inoculated starting from Friday includes union ministers, deputy ministers and union-level officials as well as senior government employees.

Others are; the elderly over the age of 65 who are residing in townships under the stay at-home order, former union ministers, deputy ministers and regional or state government members.

Myanmar received the first batch of 1.5 million doses of Covishield vaccine and 30 million doses of Covishield vaccine will arrive in Myanmar soon, the ministry said.

The Health and Sport Ministry has been arranging to vaccinate about 38.35 million people aged above 18 years within this year.

Myanmar has reported 141,104 COVID-19 cases and 3,163 deaths as of Thursday, the ministry’s latest data showed.

COVID-19 was first detected in Myanmar on March 23 2020 and over 2.43 million samples have been tested for the virus so far. (Xinhua/NAN)

By Joan Odafe

A company, Food Doctors Nigeria Limited (FDNL), says it has invented a “cold bike” to aide safe transportation and distribution of vaccines in Nigeria.

The Team Lead of FDNL, Mr Awesu Joseph, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos.

Joseph, a food safety consultant, said the invention was inspired by the need for a sustainable cold chain system that would ensure safe and speedy delivery of temperature-sensitive goods, such as vaccines.

He said the aim of the invention was to solve cold chain logistics problem in Nigeria.

“We started a fruit break initiative where we supply fruit salad to four schools in Ibadan.

“We needed safe and speedy delivery, and to deliver the fruits before 10:00 a.m. daily, at three to one degrees Celsius.

“Temperature is critical to food safety; we searched online but couldn’t find a solution.

“So we decided to design a cold bike which will find application across the food, agriculture and vaccine value chain,” he said.

Joseph explained that cold chain logistics was expensive in Nigeria, particularly as the major players focused more on pharmaceutical products.

He said vaccine potency was subject to cold chain logistics and unavailability of dry ice in the North-East region, rural and riverine communities posed a challenge to the success of vaccination programmes.

“Cold bike has cooling capacity of minus 22°C; it comes with a temperature data logger which is used for cold trace.

“The cooling capacity can be charged using direct current (DC) battery charger. It also comes with an extra charger.

“The cooler is detachable and can be connected to any kind of energy source such as 54 watts and 12 by 24 DC.

“It has a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker for real time tracking of the bike,” he said.

Joseph said that the bike could be used to transport the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the recommended temperature to the remote areas of the country.

He said apart from the vaccines distribution, it would also help in data collection, monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness as well as patients’ details. (NAN)

COVID-19 vaccination should take place “in all countries and among all populations” to realise global containment of the pandemic, Naledi Pandor, chairperson of the African Union (AU) Executive Council said.

Pandor, who is also Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa, made the remarks during the opening session of the 38th ordinary session of the AU Executive Council.

“The most important public health measure to prevent COVID-19 is a vaccine.

“For the past year, efforts have been underway to find vaccines that are both safe, affordable and effective,’’ Pandor told the virtual session of the AU Executive Council meeting, which gathered ministers of the 55-member pan-African bloc.

“We finally have achieved the goal, with a number of vaccines having undergone clinical trials and passed stringent safety tests.

The production of the vaccine has begun in earnest,’’ she said.

Noting that vaccines are costly, Pandor, however, stressed that all countries must get vaccines and must get them speedily.

“ It is vital to the global containment of COVID-19 that vaccination takes place in all countries and among all populations.’’

“We are all aware of the challenges of accessing vaccines for the Global South, particularly for Africa,’’ she added.

According to the South African minister, the developed North, which has substantial financial resources, has purchased the largest stocks, “while we in Africa are struggling to get our fair share.’’

“The painful irony is that some of the clinical trials for these vaccines were carried out in Africa.

In other cases, vaccines are packaged right here on the continent, yet we struggle to access them for our populations,’’ she added.

On Jan. 14, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chairperson of AU, announced that AU had secured a provisional 270 million COVID-19 vaccine doses on behalf of its member states.

As the African continent strives to get adequate COVID-19 vaccine under the leadership of the bloc, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Jan. 28, called on Africa’s private sector to support the continental ambition in terms of securing adequate COVID-19 vaccine. (Xinhua/NAN)

As many as 303 doctors died due to the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in Indonesia, according to the Indonesia Medical Association on Thursday.

Among the 303 doctors, 169 were general practitioners, 129 specialists, and five resident doctors.

The oldest doctors who died of COVID-19 were aged between 81 and 85 old, and the number stands at six.

The youngest were aged between 28 and 30, and the number stands at 11.

January 2021 is the month with the highest fatality of doctors due to the pandemic which stood at 57, while in December 2020 the virus killed 55 doctors in the country.

The provinces with the highest death toll of doctors due to the pandemic are East Java (60), followed by Jakarta (44), Central Java (44), West Java (34), and North Sumatra (27). (Xinhua/NAN)

Health authorities in Australia on Thursday said they were aiming at vaccinating the entire population against COVID-19 by October, saying they had secured 150 million doses of vaccine.

According to Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, Australia had secured an additional 10 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which was approved for use in the country late in January, bringing the total doses of vaccine secured to 150 million.

The total number includes 20 million Pfizer doses, 53.8 million Oxford/AstraZeneca doses, 51 million Novavax doses and 25.5 as part of the vaccine distribution alliance Covax, Health Minister Greg Hunt said in a joint press conference.

“We’re starting initially with Pfizer at the end of this month, and then with AstraZeneca in March and later we’ll be scaling up with the aim to vaccinate the population by October,” said Brendan Murphy, head of the Scientific Industry Technical Advisory Group on Vaccines.

Hunt said AstraZeneca and Pfizer confirmed that at this point in time the vaccine roll-out remained on track, subject to shipping.

The health minister also said all the people living in Australia would receive the vaccine.

Australia, a nation of around 25 million people, has recorded around 28,500 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, significantly a lower per capita rate than most developed countries.

The national death toll currently stands at 909 and no deaths were recorded in January.

Australia has taken a strict lockdown approach, alongside a system of rigorous testing and tracing to contain the virus. (dpa/NAN)