Runny Nose and Sore throats are increasingly been a factor in vaccinated people with Omicron. But the Omicron variants patient reports fewer instances of cold, fever, cough, and loss of taste or smell.
Global coronavirus cases surged past 25 million on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, as India marked a worldwide record for daily new cases in the COVID-19 pandemic.
A more infectious mutation of the new coronavirus has been found in Indonesia, the Jakarta-based Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology said on Sunday, as the Southeast Asian country's caseload surges.
As the exit of the Barcelona legend heat up, Lionel Messi did not report for the required coronavirus testing scheduled for the whole squad on Sunday.
The Commissioner for Health in Plateau State, Dr. Nimkong Lar, had on Sunday, confirmed that 41 health workers had been infected with COVID-19 in the state, with eight deaths recorded.
The commissioner disclosed this at a press briefing in Jos on the update on government’s efforts at combating COVID-19 in the state.
According to him, the state has over 320 confirmed cases of the virus out of the 4,076 tests carried out so far.
“We have received 3,471 results, with 605 pending. We have 99 in our isolation centres and 37 on home care,” Lar said.
The Chairman of the state COVID-19 Task Force, Gov. Simon Lalong, expressed worries over the increase in the number of cases in the state.
Lalong, who was represented by the Secretary of the task force, who is also the Secretary to the State Government, Prof. Danladi Atu, said that government is redoubling its efforts across the state.
He said that the enforcement would be concentrated more on the six local government areas with the highest prevalence of the disease.
“Commencing from June 29, the enforcement teams will wage a robust action on defaulters, whether citizens or organisations, particularly in the six local governments, including Jos North, Jos South, Barkin Ladi, Mangu, Kanam and Kanke.
“This enforcement will go simultaneously with public education campaign by health educators to further enlighten the citizens on the dangers of the disease and what to do to be protected,” he said.
The governor said that the enlightenment, which would be in the metropolis and rural areas, was in collaboration with the officials of the National Orientation Agency stationed at the grassroots.
The exercise is not to stigmatise people living in those local governments but to contain the disease from spreading further within them.
Lalong called for the cooperation of residents in the vicinity for preventive guidelines towards their safety, urging them to imbibe another pattern of life in consonance with the COVID-19 social behaviour.
Also speaking at the briefing, the state House of Assembly Committee Chairman on Health, Hon. Nanbol Listick, attributed the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases to the attitude and conduct of the residents.
He, however, expressed worries that the closure of boundaries within the affected six local governments, their socio-economic activities and the cultural pattern had made them vulnerable.
“We may lockdown some local governments to contain further spread of the disease,” Listick said.T
Thelawmaker urged Plateau residents to engage health workers to get appropriate enlightenment on the disease to ensure their safety.
A professor of virology and former Vice-Chancellor of Redeemer’s University, Nigeria, Ede, Osun State, Oyewale Tomori, told PUNCH HealthWise that the more there is community spread of the virus, the higher the chance of virus mutation to form a new strain.
Prof. Tomori said, “The more the community spread, the higher the chance of virus mutation.”
Confirming that there are three strains of COVID-19 in Nigeria, Tomori said the strains, which are classified into A, B.1 and B2-1, represent importations from different parts of the world.
According to the virologist, studies principally conducted at the African Centre of Excellence for the Genomics of Infectious Disease at RUN, together with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control revealed that the first SARS-CoV-2 causing the COVID-19 disease isolated from the European traveller who introduced the disease to Nigeria is genetically related to the European virus, consistent with the known travel history of this case.
“These studies conclude that there have been various introductions of multiple lineages of COVID-19 virus into Nigeria.”
Tomori said that the Ede team found that four of Nigerian cases were patients infected with a mutant virus.
“Three of these patients presented with very severe disease. This mutation helps the virus to dominate the wild type and to evade immune interventions.”
Also, a professor of molecular biology and genomics and Director at ACEGID, Christian Happi said, “There are three strains of COVID-19 so far in Nigeria.
“There is a possibility that the strains can form a new strain that is peculiar to Nigeria.”
On the implication of having different strains, Happi said: “the implication is that the virus might become more diverse and it might have an implication in terms of diagnostics and therapeutic vaccines.”
Tomori, however, said it is difficult to say if the strains of the virus will affect the severity of COVID-19 cases or increase the number of deaths “as this is an unfolding scenario. As the disease spreads we are likely to see possible mutation of yet unknown lineal expressions.”
He said that with different strains of COVID-19, “there will be different clinical manifestations depending on the infecting virus strain.”
Though after much engrossed trials, the lockdown gradually eased off, as the federal government sets up various guidelines for citizens to take responsibility of their lives, while the total lockdown eased off gradually.
The President made this known publicly through a broadcast on democracy day, approving the ease on lockdown.
President Muhammad Buhari had earlier mandated on the state government to decide on when to lift the lockdown in their various states.
But recently some state governors had declared a second lockdown in the state, the governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, who has pronounced a total lockdown on Bonny Local Governments Area and Onne Community in Eleme Local Government Areas, which commenced from June 21, 2020.
He went further to announced to the residents that there would be a statewide second lockdown, if the virus continues to increase.
Earlier, the Director General, of the Nigeria Centre For Disease Control, (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, had warned citizens against the belief that, Covid-19 does not exist in Nigeria, pinpointing that there are more Covid-19 cases in the country than reported.
On the 25th of June 2020, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC has confirmed 649 new cases of Covid-19 infections bringing the total number in the country to 22,020
649 new cases of COVID19 in Nigeria;
649 new cases of #COVID19;
Lagos-250,
Oyo-100,
Plateau-40
Delta-40
Abia-28
Kaduna-27
Ogun-22
Edo-20
Akwa Ibom-18
Kwara-17
FCT-17
Enugu-14
Niger-13
Adamawa-13
Bayelsa-7
Osun-6
Bauchi-6
Anambra-4
Gombe-3
Sokoto-2
Imo-1
Kano-1
22,020 cases
7,613 discharged
542 deaths
Considering the persistent increase in covid-19 as testified by the report of the NCDC above, there is a probability that the country may be heading for a second lockdown, as the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on covid-19, Boss Mustapha has hinted in his daily press briefing in Abuja, stating that they would be monitoring developments nationwide in order to take informed decisions by the end of June, on the second phase of the lockdown and perhaps, designating from his statement, the second lockdown may begin from next month being July 2020.
However, there may be businesses that may be closed in the prospective of the second lockdown due to their nature, as most businesses, while in operation would have to involve a large number of people together, therefore the preventive measures provided by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) will be violated.
Below are list of businesses that may be closed on the prospective of the second lockdown, prior to be on probability commencing in July 2020
Here are business that may closed on the prospective second lockdown
Commercial MotorcyclistS
Salons (Beauty and Barber's shop)
Financial Institutions
Bar Joints
Recreation and relaxation center
Cinemas
Stadiums
Your opinion will be much appreciated.
Kebbi State has recorded 67 positive cases of the Lethal Coronavirus and six deaths, while 504 persons have been tested for the disease so far in the state.
The Deputy Governor of the state, Alhaji Samaila Yombe, said this during a media briefing on the current COVID-19 situation report on Wednesday in Birnin Kebbi.
“Only 67 persons tested positive for the disease in the state, out of which 34 have been discharged.
“Six deaths were recorded out of the positive cases, which stood at 8.9 per cent case fatality,” he said.
Yombe also disclosed that the remaining cases were now receiving treatment at the Isolation Centre in Birnin Kebbi.
According to him, the state will not be complacent given the huge successes recorded in speedily containing the pandemic.
“This happy story is a sequel to the pragmatic efforts of our amiable Governor, Atiku Bagudu.
“This has eased handling of all the cases, while the Task Force never lacked financial or logistics support from him.
“We have one of the best isolation centres in the country, with a retinue of dedicated health workers and other committee members.
“We acknowledge the sustained technical support of the World Health Organisation in the training and retraining of the core health workers across the state.
“The training of healthcare workers at the primary level of health institutions supported by the National Healthcare Development Agency is ongoing all to guard against any eventuality arising from the pandemic,” he said.
Yombe said that COVID-19 was real, hence the need to sustain all the medical advice and observe the protocols to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
“While acknowledging the commendable level of support and cooperation from the people of the state, I will urge all and sundry not to relent in this direction.
“We collectively owe it a duty to protect each other, so we should continue to wash our hands, use hand sanitiser, use face masks and observe social distancing, among others,” the deputy governor said.
CULLED FROM PUNCH
A very small genetic mutation in the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus circulating throughout Europe and United States significantly increases the virus’ ability to infect cells, lab experiments performed at Scripps Research shows.
“Viruses with this mutation were much more infectious than those without the mutation in the cell culture system been used,” says Scripps Research virologist Hyeryun Choe, PhD, senior author of the study.
The mutation had the effect of markedly increasing the number of functional spikes on the viral surface.
Those spikes are what allow the virus to bind to and infect cells.
“The number or density of functional spikes on the virus is 4 or 5 times greater due to this mutation,” Choe says.
The spikes give the coronavirus its crown-like appearance and enable it to latch onto target cell receptors called ACE2. The mutation, called D614G, provides greater flexibility to the spike’s “backbone,” explains co-author Michael Farzan, PhD, co-chairman of the Scripps Research Department of Immunology and Microbiology.
More flexible spikes allow newly made viral particles to navigate the journey from producer cell to target cell fully intact, with less tendency to fall apart prematurely, he explains.
“Our data are very clear, the virus becomes much more stable with the mutation,” Choe says.
There has been much debate about why COVID-19 outbreaks in Italy and New York have so quickly overwhelmed health systems, while early outbreaks in places like San Francisco and Washington state proved more readily managed, at least initially. Was it something about those communities and their response, or had the virus somehow changed?
All viruses acquire minute genetic changes as they reproduce and spread. Those changes rarely impact fitness or ability to compete. The SARS-CoV-2 variant that circulated in the earliest regional outbreaks lacked the D614G mutation now dominating in much of the world.
But was that because of the so-called “founder effect,” seen when a small number of variants fan out into a wide population, by chance? Choe and Farzan believe their biochemical experiments settle the question.
“There have been at least a dozen scientific papers talking about the predominance of this mutation,” Farzan says. “Are we just seeing a ‘founder effect?’ Our data nails it. It is not the founder effect.”
Choe and Farzan’s paper is titled “The D614G mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein reduces S1 shedding and increases infectivity.” Now undergoing peer review, it is being posted prior to publication to the pre-print site bioRxiv, and released early, amid news reports of its findings.
Choe and Farzan note that their research was performed using harmless viruses engineered to produce key coronavirus proteins. Whether the changes they observed also translate to increased transmissibility in the real world requires additional epidemiological studies, they note.
Encouragingly, the duo found that immune factors from the serum of infected people work equally well against engineered viruses both with and without the D614G mutation. That’s a hopeful sign that vaccine candidates in development will work against variants with or without that mutation, Choe says.
Choe and Farzan have studied coronaviruses for nearly 20 years, since the first outbreak of SARS, a similar virus. They were the first to discover in 2003 that SARS bound to the ACE2 receptor on cells. Others’ experiments have shown the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds the same ACE2 receptor.
But Farzan and Choe note a key structural difference between spike proteins on the first SARS virus and this new pandemic strain. With both, under an electron microscope, the spike has tripod shape, with its three segments bound together at a backbone-like scaffold. But SARS-CoV-2 is different. Its tripod is divided in two discreet segments, S1 and S2.
Initially, this unusual feature produced unstable spikes, Farzan says. Only about a quarter of the hundreds of spikes on each SARS-CoV-2 virus maintain the structure they need to successfully infect a target cell. With the mutation, the tripod breaks much less frequently, meaning more of its spikes are fully functional, he says.
The addition of the D614G mutation means that the amino acid at that location is switched from aspartic acid to glycine. That renders it more bendable, Farzan says. Evidence of its success can be seen in the sequenced strains that scientists globally are contributing to databases including GenBank, the duo reports. In February, no sequences deposited to the GenBank database showed the D614G mutation. But by March, it appeared in 1 out of 4 samples. In May, it appeared in 70 percent of samples, Farzan says.
“Over time, it has figured out how to hold on better and not fall apart until it needs to,” Farzan says. “The virus has, under selection pressure, made itself more stable.”
It is still unknown whether this small mutation affects the severity of symptoms of infected people, or increases mortality, the scientists say. While ICU data from New York and elsewhere reports a preponderance of the new D614G variant, much more data, ideally under controlled studies, are needed, Choe says.
Countries are gradually lifting the lockdowns put in place to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
Shops and businesses are reopening, students are returning to school, and some airlines have resumed operations.
But several countries have reported a resurgence in new infections as they gradually return to normalcy.
Iran's president threatened to reimpose restrictions after doctors recorded the highest total of daily cases.
Schools, museums and parks were closed in Seoul shortly after they reopened.
The World Health Organization recently warned the virus may become endemic, similar to HIV.
So how should we prepare to live with the virus?
Source: Al Jazeera News
The Director General of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, disclosed this at the Presidential Task Force media briefing on Wednesday in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the Singapore study shows that COVID-19 patients are no longer infectious from the 11th day of being sick, despite some may still test positive.
“A positive test does not equate to infectiousness or viable virus,” a joint research paper by Singapore’s National Centre for Infectious Diseases and the Academy of Medicine Singapore reported.
The virus “could not be isolated or cultured after day 11 of illness.”
The paper was based on a study of 73 patients in the city-state.
Ihekweazu said the agency’s strategy on managing COVID-19 patients was guided by the latest local and international clinical scientific evidence, and the NCDC would evaluate if the latest evidence could be incorporated into its patient clinical management plan.
The DG said in line with this latest findings, the agency would release a new case management guidelines for COVID-19 to review the criteria for admission and discharge of treated patients.
He noted that the move would assist in managing challenges faced in isolation centres across the country, particularly with the shortage of bed space.
“We are now relooking our practice in terms of discharge criteria, and even who to keep in hospital, and who can stay at home and for how long.
“Right now, the entire case management team which includes our colleagues at the Federal Ministry of Health, NCDC and few clinicians, are reviewing our case management guidelines to redefine our approach around admission in terms of who is admitted and duration of admission and when to discharge,” he stated.
Ihekweazu, however, said the new guidelines would be released soonest to assist the country better tackle the virus.
“If we are able to do this successfully, it will have good implications on the duration of time people spend in hospital and when they can be discharged.
“That will enable us bring in people more frequently, it will ease up some of the bed space and help us in some of the practical challenges we have.”
An experiment using a black light has shown how quickly germs and viruses can be spread in restaurants when an infected person is in.
Hundreds of tourists were infected with COVID19 on a cruise ship in Japan, with a buffet on the ship believed to be where most people get it.
The new experiment simulates how far a virus can spread at a buffet venue by using a paint invisible to the naked eye to represent the virus.
Conducted by Japanese state broadcaster NHK in liaison with infection experts, the video shows 10 people coming into the restaurant, with one of them "infected" with the paint.
The group sits down at a table before going to the buffet table to dish out food onto their plates before sitting back down to eat.
Black lights are then turned on, illuminating where the "virus" has spread from the one person.
The paint, which shines white under the light, can be seen on the hands of all the participants and on the faces of most of them, especially around their mouths.
It is also on the food, tongs, the lid of the food containers, the handle of a drink jug, all the crockery, the table cloth and the bill.
John Nichols, professor in pathology at Hong Kong University, told CNN the video "really highlights the need of what people have been saying about hand hygiene to stop the spread of disease".
The video was released as research by Stanford University found speaking transmits the virus.
The louder people speak, the more droplets are dispersed, the study found.
Researchers said with just one minute of loud speaking, at least 1,000 infected droplets remain in the air for more than eight minutes.
These can then be inhaled by other people, triggering a new COVID-19 infection.
Different Researchers from various corners have in Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute & Department of Surgery have discovered 14 mutations to COVID-19, with one of the strain suspected to be more contagious.
The 33-page report has been uploaded to the bioRxiv preprint server, while waiting to be peer-reviewed.
The researchers revealed that the new strain began spreading in Europe in early February, before migrating to other parts of the world, including the U.S., adding that it became the dominant form of the virus across the globe by the end of March.
They warned that if COVID-19 doesn’t subside in the summer like the seasonal flu, it could mutate further and potentially limit the effectiveness of vaccines being developed by scientists.
According to the team, the study involved analysis of genomes of the virus found in 6,000 infected people from around the globe.
They revealed focusing specifically on the virus genes responsible for producing the “spike protein,” which is the mechanism used by the virus to attach to human cells.
In so doing, they discovered 14 mutations, noting that the one named D614G, stood out because it was found in almost all samples outside of China.
“It was also particularly notable because it appeared to replace a prior mutation called D614,” they said.
The researchers explained that in the original outbreak in China, there were only D614 mutations, noting that it was only after the virus began appearing in Europe that the G614 mutation emerged.
They suggest that the fact that the G614 virus took over from the prior mutation could mean it is more easily spread.
“Notably, after the mutation appeared in Europe, the G614 mutation began appearing in samples from other sites around the world, suggesting that this new strain is behind the global pandemic,” the researchers said.
According to the journal, Medical Xpress, others in the medical science field have expressed scepticism about the suggestions made by the team, insisting that it is far too soon to assume that any of the various strains of the virus are any more contagious than the original strain in China.
“Some have even suggested that the reason the strain with the G614 mutation has spread so far and wide is because it happened to infect regions that did not begin mitigation efforts in the earliest days of the pandemic.
“In either case, more work is required to ascertain whether any strains are more contagious than any other, and also to determine if the virus mutates at a rate that could outpace vaccine development,” stated the journal.
