Nigerian authorities are pledging to provide more protection for healthcare workers following an increase in COVID-19 cases among the group.
 
Chikwe Ihekweazu, director-general of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control  Ihekweazu, said Monday the positive coronavirus test of 75 healthcare workers in the past week is worrisome.
 
Ihkekweazu is urging healthcare personnel to exercise caution and suspect COVID-19 in every case until it is ruled out.  He warned even then, the risk of infection still exits.   
 
Ihekweazu also said the NCDC will soon make available rapid diagnostic test kits in more health facilities as an additional form of protection.
 
Anadolu Agency said more than 800 healthcare workers in Nigeria have been infected with the virus since June, according to Health Minister Osagie Ehanire.
 
The Nigerian Medical Association has confirmed at least 20 doctors died from the virus within one week period last month.  
 
Nigeria has confirmed more than 131,000 COVID-19 infections and 1,607 deaths, according Johns Hopkins University Covid Resource Center.
…

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said medical regulators will begin testing the integrity of the country’s first batch of AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 before vaccinating front line healthcare workers. He made the comment during a national address late Monday, hours after he and other dignitaries accepted 1.2 million doses of vaccine that arrived at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport Monday afternoon. President Ramaphosa said after healthcare workers get their shots the country aims to vaccinate essential workers, people over 60 years of age, people with co-morbidities and those living in places such as nursing homes. The remainder of the adult population will get their shots in the third phase of the vaccination program. South Africa is the African nation hardest hit by the novel coronavirus, with more than 1.4 million confirmed cases since the virus turned up in the country in March. The nation’s second wave of the virus fueled by a new variant that surfaced in late December appears to be subsiding.  The head of South Africa’s coronavirus task force, Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, said the current vaccines are expected to work on the new variant, called 501.V2, Ramaphosa said in addition to Monday’s shipment the country is due to receive another 500,000 doses from the Serum Institute of India next month.  South Africa has also secured millions of doses of vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and the global COVAX facility, which is a worldwide collaboration to speed up the development, production and access to COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. The president said South Africa will also receive an allocation of vaccine doses through the African Union, which has been negotiating with manufacturers to secure vaccines for the entire continent on a pooled basis. South Africa will now become the fifth African nation to roll out vaccinations, after Morocco, Egypt, the Seychelles and Guinea.   
…

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Monday said 105 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa have been found in the nation, with 11 of those cases having no links to international travel.Speaking at a Downing Street news briefing, Hancock said health authorities plan to test 80,000 people from areas around the country to isolate and stop the spread of the new variant.”There’s currently no evidence to suggest this variant is any more severe, but we need to come down on it hard, and we will,” he said.A man takes a swab at a test center in Goldsworth Park, as the South African variant of the novel coronavirus is reported in parts of Surrey, in Woking, Britain, Feb. 1, 2021.Hancock said the surge of new testing is targeted on those areas where the variant had been discovered and that every single positive case is being sequenced. He said health officials, in coordination with local authorities, are going door to door to test people in those areas.Hancock also announced on Monday that Britain had now vaccinated 9.2 million people against COVID-19, including 931,204 vaccinations over the weekend. He also announced that Britain has ordered another 40 million doses of a vaccine developed by the French company, Valneva, as the government prepares for the likelihood that repeated vaccinations will be needed to keep the virus in check.The vaccine, which will be made in Scotland, is still undergoing clinical trials and has not been approved by regulators.Britain has seen the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in Europe — with over 106,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University data — but is pushing ahead with one of the world’s quickest vaccine programs. 
 
…

The World Health Organization (WHO) noted Monday that globally, the number of new coronavirus cases fell for the third consecutive week. At the agency’s regular news briefing conducted virtually from its headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while many nations are still seeing infections increasing, it is nonetheless encouraging news. Tedros said it shows the virus can be controlled, even with the new variants in circulation, and that with proven public health measures such as social distancing, the wearing of masks and good hygiene, infections can be prevented.   FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, Jan. 21, 2021.He warned, however, that the world has been at this point before, and it is no time to relax.“Over the past year, there have been moments in almost all countries when cases declined, and governments opened up too quickly, and individuals let down their guard, only for the virus to come roaring back,” he noted. Tedros said that as vaccines are rolled out around the world, it is important to continue to take the precautions that keep people safe. He said controlling the spread of the virus saves lives now and reduces the chances of more variants emerging.  “And it helps to ensure vaccines remain effective,” he said. Also at the briefing, WHO Emergencies Program Director Michael Ryan responded to a question regarding the WHO-led team currently studying the origins of the virus and early skepticism about what it may find.  FILE – WHO Health Emergencies Program head Michael Ryan, July 3, 2020.Commentators have raised doubts about what the investigators can discover this long after the fact and given China’s wavering cooperation with the investigation. Ryan took exception to those who have already said they would not accept the report from the team or that there may be other intelligence with different findings.  ”No other country has provided any documentary, intelligence or other information to WHO. We are out there looking for it. We are in the field with experts from 10 countries looking to find the answers. If you have the answers, if you think you have some answers, please let us know,” he said. Ryan said the team currently in the field in China represents not just WHO but the world community and deserves support. 
 
…

Lucenia Dunn spent the early days of the coronavirus pandemic encouraging people to wear masks and keep a safe distance from each other in Tuskegee, a mostly Black city where the government once used unsuspecting African American men as guinea pigs in a study of a sexually transmitted disease.
 
Now, the onetime mayor of the town immortalized as the home of the infamous “Tuskegee syphilis study” is wary of getting inoculated against COVID-19. Among other things, she’s suspicious of the government promoting a vaccine that was developed in record time when it can’t seem to conduct adequate virus testing or consistently provide quality rural health care.
 
“I’m not doing this vaccine right now. That doesn’t mean I’m never going to do it. But I know enough to withhold getting it until we see all that is involved,” said Dunn, who is Black.
 
The coronavirus immunization campaign is off to a shaky start in Tuskegee and other parts of Macon County. Area leaders point to a resistance among residents spurred by a distrust of government promises and decades of failed health programs. Many people in this city of 8,500 have relatives who were subjected to unethical government experimentation during the syphilis study.
 
“It does have an impact on decisions. Being in this community, growing up in this community, I would be very untruthful if I didn’t say that,” said Frank Lee, emergency management director in Macon County. Lee is Black.
 
Health experts have stressed both the vaccines’ safety and efficacy. They have noted that while the vaccines were developed with record-breaking speed, they were based on decades of prior research. Vaccines used in the U.S. have shown no signs of serious side effects in studies of tens of thousands of people. And with more than 26 million vaccinations administered in the U.S. alone so far, no red flags have been reported.
 
Tuskegee is not a complete outlier. A recent survey conducted by the communications firm Edelman revealed that as of November, only 59% of people in the U.S. were willing to get vaccinated within a year with just 33% happy to do so as soon as possible.
But skepticism seems to run deeper here.
 
When Alabama and the rest of the South were still segregated by race, government medical workers starting in 1932 withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with syphilis in Tuskegee and surrounding Macon County so physicians could track the disease. The study, which involved about 600 men, ended in 1972 only after it was revealed by The Associated Press.
 
A lawsuit filed on behalf of the men by Black Tuskegee attorney Fred Gray resulted in a $9 million settlement, and then-President Bill Clinton formally apologized on behalf of the U.S. government in 1997. But the damage left a legacy of distrust that extends far beyond Tuskegee: A December survey showed 40% of Black people nationwide said they wouldn’t get the coronavirus vaccine. Such hesitancy is more entrenched than among white people, even though Black Americans have been hit disproportionately hard by the virus.
 
The Chicago-based Black nationalist group Nation of Islam is warning away members nationwide with an online presentation titled “Beyond Tuskegee: Why Black People Must Not Take The Experimental COVID-19 Vaccine.”
 
Gray, now 90 and still practicing law in Tuskegee, rejects such comparisons. The syphilis study and the COVID-19 vaccine are completely different, he said. He believes that enough that he himself has gotten the vaccine and is publicly encouraging others to do the same.
 
Georgette Moon is on a similar mission. Hoping to both protect herself and encourage skittish friends, the former city council member recently bared an arm and let a public health nurse immunize her. Now, Moon said, if only more fellow Black residents could overcome their lingering fears and get the vaccine.
 
“The study is a huge factor,” Moon said. “I’ve had very qualified, well-educated people tell me they are not going to take it right now.”
 
The Macon County health department, which is administering two-step Moderna vaccines in its modern building near downtown, could perform as many as 160 immunizations a day, officials said. But a maximum of 140 people received the vaccine on any single date during the first six days of appointments, with a total of 527 people immunized during the period. Health care workers, emergency responders and long-term care residents are currently eligible for shots in Alabama, along with people 75 and older.
 
There are some signs of hope. State statistics show a slow uptick in the number of people coming in for vaccinations, and word seems to be filtering through the community that it’s OK to be vaccinated.
 
Down the street from the county clinic, the Veterans Affairs hospital in Tuskegee is vaccinating veterans 65 and older. While only 40% of the VA workers in the area have been vaccinated, officials said, more people are agreeing to the shots than during the initial wave.
 
“They know people who have had the vaccine, they hear more about it, they become more comfortable with it,” said Dr. April Truett, an infectious disease physician at the hospital.
 
The Rev. John Curry Jr. said he and his wife took the shots after the health department said they could get appointments without a long wait. The pastor of the oldest Black church in town, Curry said he is encouraging congregants to get the vaccine.
 
Yet he said he also understands the power of lingering distrust in a town that will forever be linked to the syphilis study, one of the most reviled episodes of U.S. public health history.
 
“It’s a blemish on Tuskegee,” he said. “It hangs on the minds of people.” 
…

A team of World Health Organization scientists investigating the source of the coronavirus, that first emerged in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, visited a provincial disease control center Monday that was key in the early management of the COVID outbreak.   China did not release any details about the team’s visit to the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control.  Team member Peter Daszak, however, told reporters it had been a “really good meeting, really important.” Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team, investigating the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus, visit the closed Huanan Seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, China’s central Hubei province, Jan. 31, 2021.Since the WHO team’s arrival last month, the scientists have also visited the Huanan Seafood Market that was linked to a cluster of COVID cases and at least one of the hospitals in Wuhan that treated some of the first patients. The scientists want to know where the virus originated, in what animal, and how it made its way into humans, something that could take years to figure out. The outbreak in China led to the worldwide COVID pandemic.  Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Monday that there are nearly 103 million global COVID infections.  More than 2 million people have died, Hopkins said.  FILE – Emergency medical technician Thomas Hoang, 29, of Emergency Ambulance Service, pushes a gurney into an emergency room to drop off a COVID-19 patient in Placentia, Calif., Jan. 8, 2021.The U.S. continues to have more cases than anyplace else at nearly 103 million. India follows with10.7 million infections and Brazil comes in third with 9.2 million cases.  The U.S. also has more deaths from the virus than any other nation with more than 441,000, followed by Brazil with more than 224,000 and Mexico with more than 158,000.  A leading U.S. epidemiologist said Sunday he believes the highly contagious and more deadly British strain of the COVID virus could become the dominant strain in the U.S. in the coming weeks, resulting in a surge of infections “like we have not yet seen in this country.” Michael Osterholm, who served on President Joe Biden’s transition coronavirus advisory board, speaking on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday, urged the Biden administration and U.S. municipalities to be diligent in inoculating Americans with the COVID vaccines ahead of the “hurricane” of the British variant.  In Jerusalem Sunday, thousands of black-clad, ultra-Orthodox Israelis ignored the country’s ban on large gatherings to attend two separate funerals for prominent rabbis. The densely packed crowds also ignored mask-wearing directives and social-distancing observations. Each funeral had a procession through the city’s streets.  Israel has staged an aggressive vaccination program, but officials are concerned that the mass gatherings in Jerusalem Sunday could undo any progress and spark a COVID surge.    The European Union announced Sunday that British company AstraZeneca had agreed to send 9 million more doses of the vaccine to EU countries.    AstraZeneca will also deliver the doses a week earlier than planned, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter, calling the news a “step forward on vaccines.” Step forward on vaccines.@AstraZeneca will deliver 9 million additional doses in the first quarter (40 million in total) compared to last week’s offer & will start deliveries one week earlier than scheduled.The company will also expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe.— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) January 31, 2021On the African continent, only a handful of countries have been able to begin vaccinating their populations. On Sunday, Ghana announced it planned to acquire 17.6 million doses of the vaccine by this summer, with the first batches arriving by March.    “Our aim is to vaccinate the entire population, with an initial target of 20 million people,” President Nana Akufo-Addo said Sunday.    He also announced stricter measures against the virus, including banning large gatherings, as the country battles a second wave.          
…

U.S. President Joe Biden is planning to bring what he calls a Clean Energy Revolution to tackle climate change. The diesel industry, which had gone through its own revolution a decade ago to meet stricter environmental standards, has seen payoffs in adopting “green” fuel initiatives. Genia Dulot has the story. 
…

Since taking office in January, President Joe Biden has reaffirmed a national commitment to integrity in scholarship and research, appointing scientists to numerous leadership roles.  Educators and experts applaud these appointments and say elevating intellectual integrity in research and science will take the combined effort of universities, industry and the public, too.    Biden appointed Eric Lander — who in 2001 was the first author on a paper published in the science journal Nature that heralded human genome sequencing — to be the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Biden elevated the post to Cabinet-level status for the first time.     “How can we address stresses on academic research labs and promote creative models for federal research support?” the president asked in his January 15 letter announcing Lander’s appointment. Some experts say that with the change in the presidential administration in the U.S., this is a moment for academia and research to review its standards, particularly given that the validity of science is sometimes questioned.  “Many Americans view scientific fact as fake news, aimed at furthering a liberal progressive agenda,” Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, told VOA. “Higher education, now more than ever, needs to be a visible force in the communities we seek to serve, demonstrating our relevance to the everyday concerns of people within those communities.”    Earl Lewis, professor of history, Afromerican and African studies at the University of Michigan, and founding director of the university’s Center for Social Solutions, said he addresses suspicions about higher education by asking skeptics if they prefer the doctor who finished first in their graduating class or the one who finished last.  “No one raises their hand” for the last in the class, Lewis said. “And I say, ‘So you do value education.’ Why is it that some of us who have been in higher education are viewed as part of the enemy class, rather than the class that can provide solutions to the problems that we all face?”   For Ivan Oransky, who is co-founder of the website Retraction Watch, the lack of quality scholarship in publishing research and reporting errors is part of the problem. Retractions are part of the solution, reporting information in published work “that is no longer reliable,” describing it as “the sort of nuclear option of correction in, in science or in academia, writ large, he told VOA. “How willing are researchers, journals, universities, funding agencies willing to actually correct the record and actually talk about it?” Oransky asked.    But not correcting the record leads to more mistrust of data, Oransky said, and that includes scientific journals as well as the general press that reports discoveries of mass public impact.  “When I look at a news website, I’m actually much more likely to trust them if I see corrections running,” he said. “Look at how much information is coursing through that news website. You would expect some percentage of it to just be an error, not because people tried to make a mistake, but that we’re humans, we make mistakes.  “If I’m reading a website, I see that they’ve never published a correction, I run the other way,” he said.   Rohin Francis, a British cardiologist, said that a kind of overzealousness has had a hand in the erosion of the public’s trust of scholarship and education. He calls those who may mean well but fall short of accuracy in social media posts and memes, the “Yay Science!” crowd.  “I’m a cheerleader for science myself,” he said on his Medlife Crisis YouTube channel, “but I’m fully aware of the complex way we make progress, the missteps, the human biases that are superimposed on discovery and implementation, the corruption, and just the highly erratic quality of published material. Science is a messy business.”Speaking at a video news event January 14 for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Norman Augustine, former chief executive of Lockheed Martin, called scientific research “critically important to the future quality of life in America, and to America’s position in the world.”   But “research is being badly underprioritized” in the U.S., while other nations like China are moving forward, he said.   Augustine quoted former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in China’s pursuit of technological supremacy.  “The history of modernization is in essence a history of scientific and technological progress. Scientific discovery and technological inventions have brought about new civilizations, modern industries and the rise and fall of nations. I firmly believe that science is the ultimate revolution,” Augustine said, quoting Jiabao.“China sets goals for science,” Augustine said. “Furthermore, they meet those goals. … China has already passed the U.S. in terms of the number of doctoral degrees it awards in science and engineering. Furthermore, 19% of the baccalaureate degrees awarded in America are awarded in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”    “In China, over half are awarded in those fields,” he said.    The U.S., however, “certainly can compete in innovation, do our research with higher efficiency, factors like that,” he added.  
…