By Cecilia Ologunagba

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says far more research is needed into the “constellation” of sometimes debilitating symptoms among people who have recovered from COVID-19, adding that it “will impact” global health systems.

WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said this at a news conference on COVID-19 at WHO headquarters in Geneva on Friday.

In his speech posted on WHO website, Ghebreyesus said WHO held a global meeting of patients, clinicians and other stakeholders last week to advance understanding of what is officially called post-COVID-19 condition or long COVID.

He said WHO released a case reporting form that would allow more data to be collected on long COVID in a standardised way.

“This will help to improve the understanding, surveillance and clinical management of the condition,’’ the director general said.

According to him, the independent expert team to study the origins of the COVID-19 virus has completed its trip to China.

“The expert team is working on a summary report which we hope will be published next week, and the final report will be published in the coming weeks.

“The number of reported cases of COVID-19 globally has declined for the fourth week in a row, and the number of deaths also fell for the second consecutive week.

“These declines appear to be due to countries implementing public health measures more stringently,’’ he said.

Also speaking, Dr Janet Diaz, Team Lead, Health Care Readiness at WHO, said: “We know that this post-COVID-19 condition is a heterogenous group of symptoms that occur after the acute illness.

“So, these are symptoms or complications that can happen potentially a month after, three months after, or even six months after and as we are learning more, we are trying to understand the real duration of this condition,” he said.

Citing reported symptoms such as neurological and physical illness, Diaz noted that an unspecified number of sufferers had been unable to return to work, once they had recovered from the acute sickness caused by the new coronavirus.

“We are concerned obviously with the numbers of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus that the numbers, just by the magnitude of the pandemic, will impact health systems,” he said.

Although comprehensive data on the condition is not yet available, the WHO official insisted that “these (symptoms) were real”.

“Some of the ‘more common’ ailments were fatigue, exhaustion and post-exertional malaise, cognitive disfunction, along with what some patients called ‘brain fog’,” Diaz said, describing a “constellation of symptoms”.

Further research is also needed to drill down into how many COVID-19 sufferers who did not require Intensive Care Unit (ICU) treatment still went on to develop the condition.

“What we know this far is that patients experiencing (a) post-COVID-19 condition could have been hospitalised patients, those in the ICU.

“So, we do know that has happened in patients who are very sick, but also in patients who were not managed inside the hospital, they have had complications and they have had persistent symptoms or new symptom or symptoms that waxed and waned, that came and went after their acute illness.”

To promote a better understanding of post-COVID sickness and support patient care and public health interventions, the WHO has called on clinicians and patients to report data on symptoms to the Organisation’s Clinical Platform.

The case report form – which is available in multiple languages – had been designed to report standardised clinical data from individuals after they have left hospital or after recovering from acute illness.

“What we don’t know is why it’s happening, so what is the pathophysiology of this condition, the researchers are really working hard to get to the answers of these questions,” Diaz said.

In a related development, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced on Friday a deal to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, potentially before the end of March.

The agreement is on behalf of the COVAX platform, primarily for developing nations, set up by the WHO,  The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

“This supply agreement allows UNICEF to procure up to 40 million doses that have been secured under the COVAX Facility’s Advance Purchase Agreement with Pfizer/BioNTech to be available throughout 2021,” the UN agency said in a statement.

The Pfizer-BioNTech jab was the first to receive WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL) on Dec. 31,  2020.

“It requires ultra-cold chain storage facilities which UNICEF has secured with partners to support governments in their roll-out of a variety of COVID-19 vaccines,” it said. (NAN)

The first batch of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Japan on Friday, local media reported, with official approval for the shots expected within days as the country races to control a third wave of infections ahead of the Olympic Games.

A government health panel is due to deliberate on the vaccine later on Friday, when it is expected to green-light the shots for formal approval. Kyodo News reported that approval would come on Sunday.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has said vaccinations would begin from the middle of next week, starting with health workers, and the government hopes to have secured enough supplies for the whole populace by mid-year.

A Japanese health ministry official said he could not confirm the reports of the vaccine’s arrival due to security reasons.

Media sent news alerts on the arrival of the first batch of vaccines at Narita international airport, near Tokyo, amid concerns about supply due to questions over the European Union’s willingness to allow COVID-19 vaccines to leave its territory.

The number of doses that arrived was not reported.

The European Commission said on Thursday it has so far approved all requests for the export of COVID-19 vaccines, including to Japan, since it set up a mechanism to monitor vaccine flows on Jan. 30.

Pfizer applied for Japanese approval in December for its COVID-19 vaccine, which is already being administered in the United States, Singapore and other parts of the world.

The Japanese government has arranged to buy 144 million doses, or enough to inoculate 72 million people, of the vaccine made by the U.S. drugmaker and German partner BioNTech.

It also has deals for vaccines being developed by AstraZeneca Plc, Moderna Inc, and Novavax Inc.

Japan has so far recorded about 410,000 coronavirus cases and 6,772 deaths, and is racing to get infections under control especially ahead of the Tokyo Olympic Games starting in July.

Most of Japan is still under a state of emergency after its third and most deadly wave of the virus hit late last year, though cases and fatalities have trended lower in the past couple weeks. (Reuters/NAN)

A Pakistani teenager shot and killed a man from the minority Ahmadiyya community, police said on Friday, the latest in a series of hate crimes against the persecuted group.

The 65-year-old man was gunned down outside a clinic in the north-western city of Peshawar on Thursday, police officer Zafar Khan told dpa.

The police arrested the 18-year-old male, who had confessed to the crime and cited the man’s faith as his sole motive, Khan said.

This was the fifth Ahmadiyya man who has been fatally targeted over his faith in Peshawar in less than a year, said Saleem Uddin, a spokesman for the community.

A mentally challenged Pakistani-U.S. citizen from the community was shot and killed inside a courtroom during his trial under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws in 2020.

The U.S. State Department at the time urged Pakistan to repeal blasphemy laws to prevent crimes triggered by religious hatred.

The Ahmadiyya community, a four-million-strong minority group in Pakistan, has faced death, intimidation and a sustained hate campaign for decades.

Ahmadiyya insist they are followers of Islam, but Pakistan declared the group non-Muslim in 1974 for regarding their sect’s founder, Ghulam Ahmad, as a prophet.

Orthodox Islam holds there can be no prophets after Mohammed.

More than 260 members of the group have been killed in targeted gun or bomb attacks since 1984 in Pakistan, according to statistics compiled by the community. (dpa/NAN)

Myanmar’s military has arrested at least six more members of the country’s ousted government of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, including one of her close advisers, the daily, The Irrawaddy reported on Thursday.

The high-ranking politicians were detained on Wednesday evening, after members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party had openly supported the mass protest against a recent military coup, the report said.

The 75-year-old Suu Kyi is said to be under house arrest but has not been seen in public since the coup and has reportedly been charged under the country’s import-export law for walkie-talkies found in her home.

The military junta has since imposed a one-year state of emergency and appointed a new cabinet, citing election fraud in the recent November polls, which the NLD had won with a decisive majority, as reason for overturning the government.

Meanwhile, demonstrations continued on Thursday for a sixth consecutive day, despite a violent police crackdown on protesters on Tuesday including arrests and injuries.

A large rally was held in front of the Chinese embassy in Yangon, with participants accusing Beijing of supporting the military junta. “The world is us, but China is behind the military regime,” a poster read.

In the northern city of Mandalay, colourfully dressed artists took to the streets to demand the restoration of civilian rule, while bank and railway employees also took part in demonstrations.

In addition, several ethnic minority groups joined the protests according to reports on social networks.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Thursday that it had sanctioned individuals and entities from Myanmar responsible for the military coup that took place in the country on Feb. 1.

Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s military forces, is one of the individuals sanctioned.

U.S. President Joe Biden had announced punitive measures on Wednesday.

Calls are also growing louder in Germany for the government to follow the U.S.’ lead and sanction Myanmar.

The Society for Threatened Peoples, a human rights group, said Foreign Minister Heiko Maas should push for sanctions at the German and European level.

“The military must go back to the barracks, the putsching generals must be deprived of their power and sanctioned,” said Jasna Causevic, the group’s expert on genocide prevention. (dpa/NAN)

Europe’s oldest person, Sister Andre, aged 117 years, who is a nun. has survived the coronavirus, after living through two world wars, as well as the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

Born in 1904, the  French nun had tested positive for the virus on Jan. 16, according to David Tavella, communications director at the Sainte Catherine Laboure nursing home in Toulon, southern France, where she lives.

The CNN reported that  Sister Andre, earlier known as Lucille Randon, became a nun in 1944 and shifted to the nursing home in Toulon in 2009.

She had shown no symptoms of coronavirus, the CNN reported.

Speaking in an interview with CNN affiliate, BFMTV, she said, “I didn’t know I had it…No, I wasn’t scared because I wasn’t scared of dying.”

As today is her birthday, her meal will have all her favourites, that is,  foie gras, baked Alaska and a glass of red wine.

“She drinks a glass of wine every lunchtime,” Tavella said.

He further said that although no visitors are allowed at the nursing home, she will receive video messages from her family and the local mayor, and will also take part in a video Mass.

“Sister Andre’s birthday is taking place at a good time.

“It couldn’t be a better time, because it will mark the beginning of big festivities that will be organised around this relaxing of our restrictions,” Tavella told BFMTV. (ANI/NAN)

By Lizzy Okoji
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, has lauded diplomatic relations between Nigeria and China in the past 50 years, describing the bilateral relations as an invaluable partnership.

Onyeama made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja as both countries celebrate 50 years of bilateral relations.

Nigeria and China formally entered into diplomatic relations on Feb. 10, 1971, a little after a decade of Nigeria’s independence in 1960.

He said both countries have maintained strong friendship over the years without any disagreements, noting that Nigeria has greatly benefitted from the friendship especially in infrastructure development.

Onyeama explained that China had impacted on Nigeria in almost all sectors and completed a lot of developmental projects in the country.

“We maintained a strong friendship for half a century, we have not had any disagreement at all during this period.

“China has also developed great capacity for major complex projects and capital intensive projects such as railway, big building complexes, airports, dams and roads.

“And so, since for President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, infrastructure has become key priority, the Chinese being an invaluable partner in helping us to build significant infrastructure.

“They have been a major in our rail, airports, the Mambilla dam we are working on and other areas we are working on like roads and so on.

“They have been particularly important significant partners of Nigeria right across the board,” Onyeama said.

Onyeama said aside bilateral relations with China, the Forum on China and African Cooperation (FOCAC), has fostered infrastructure development across Africa.

”To further strengthen bilateral relations between both countries, when the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Nigeria in January, we agreed to set up a committee.

”The committee will be the umbrella body to monitor and coordinate all cooperation with China so as to give it some coherence and cohesion and make it easier to plan.

“We look also in the future to cooperating more with the Chinese in the multilateral and international spheres, the united nations and other multilateral spheres to be on the same page with China in terms of global governance.

“And to also have more Chinese support in the areas of security; maritime security and land security, insurgency and terrorism.

“And China is also advanced in the military field so we will also be looking to have some support there going forward,” Onyeama said.

By Busayo Onijala/Augusta Uchediunor

The United Nations Resident Coordinator, Edward Kallon, on Tuesday said that sustainable food systems should be put in place to ensure sufficient food for the present generation.

He said the systems do not just end hunger but helps future generations have access to adequate food and proper nutrition.

Kallon spoke at a virtual media briefing on “The Nigeria UN Food Systems Summit Dialogue (UNFSSD)” scheduled to hold on Feb. 23.

The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that the media engagement is a prelude to series of dialogues on the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) 2021, being organized by the Federal Government in collaboration with the United Nation in Nigeria.

According to Kallon,  as population grows, there is greater need to understand how availability of quality food can  cater for the needs of people in a sustainable way.

“The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, will convene the Food Systems Summit in September, as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

“The Summit will launch bold new actions to transform the way the world produces and consumes food.

“The UN and the Government of Nigeria is bringing together key players in science, business, policy, healthcare and academia, as well as farmers, women organisations, youth organisations, consumer groups, food processors, logistics organisations, environmental activists, and most importantly, the media,” he said.

Kallon urged media partners to get in the flow of the UN Food Systems Summit and “support our efforts by encouraging debate and discussion among the population on issues of sustainable food systems for the country.”

He said that without the media, all dialogues would be likened to ‘winking in the dark’, because no one would see what was being done .

“As you all know, every individual has a role to play in our efforts towards sustainability of food systems and we are all stakeholders when it comes to food – because we are all at least consumers,” he said.

Mrs Olusola Idowu, Convenor of the summit in Nigeria and Permanent Secretary, Budget and National Planning, said that in order to have a seamless Food System Dialogue, committees had been constituted.

These committees, she said, included sector experts within the government, development partners and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) with specific responsibilities.

She said it was envisaged that the dialogues would harvest contributions to shape pathways leading to collective determination of sustainable food systems and how they would contribute to achieving food security in Nigeria.

“The dialogues will identify the practices and policies that will have the greatest impact on the achievement of the desired future vision within the Nigerian local food systems.

“Also, it will help consider the possibility of assessing progress towards improved food systems, as well as determine who needs to be involved in achieving the overarching objective of building effective food systems in Nigeria.

“The dialogues provide opportunity to different stakeholders to work together to devise pathways for the sustainable future of national food systems that makes contributions to the SDGs,” Idowu said.

NAN reports that in order to generate a robust discussion during the inception, a dialogue is scheduled for Feb. 23 with lead paper entitled, “An Overview of the Food System in Nigeria – Challenges, Prospects and the Way Forward.” (NAN)