Coronavirus
Spain begins 10-day mourning period for coronavirus victims
Spain has begun an official 10-day mourning period for the tens of thousands of victims of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.
Starting from Wednesday, all flags on public buildings across the nation and on Spanish naval vessels will be lowered to half-mast until June 5 to pay tribute to the more than 27,000 people that have so far lost their lives.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Twitter this would last for “10 days, the longest period of mourning in our democracy, in which we will all express our sorrow and pay homage to those who have died”.
The mourning period, which was approved at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, would also include a solemn memorial ceremony presided over by Spain’s head of state, King Felipe VI, according to government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero.
The dead are “men and women whose lives have been suddenly cut short, leaving friends and family in great pain, both from the sudden loss and from the difficult circumstances in which it has occurred,” she said following the cabinet meeting.
“Eight out of 10 victims were older than 70, they were those who helped build the country that we know today.”
Spain, where a nationwide lockdown was first imposed on March 14, is one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, registering the fifth-highest number of confirmed cases and deaths.
As of Wednesday, at least 27,111 people had died of COVID-19, the highly contagious disease caused by the new coronavirus. The overall number of known infections stands at more than 236,000, with some 150,000 recoveries.
Spain’s healthcare workers have been severely affected by the virus, with up to 20 percent infected out of the total confirmed case, Al Jazeera’s Marta Herrero reported.
“In the weekly cabinet meeting yesterday, the Spanish government decided to consider work accident for all the people that have died and been infected by COVID-19 in the healthcare sector,” she said from the capital, Madrid.
-Easing of restrictions
The government has so far renewed a state of emergency four times, which has allowed it to impose some of the world’s tightest restrictions on the country’s nearly 47 million people.
But in recent weeks, strict home-confinement orders and bans on public activity have been gradually relaxed.
Since May 11, half of Spain’s population has experienced an easing of the restrictions, with cafe terraces reopening and people allowed to meet in groups of up to 10 people – although these measures have not yet been rolled out in the worst-hit areas such as the Madrid region and Barcelona.
On Saturday, far-right protests erupted in Madrid as thousands of people, many honking car horns, rallied against the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and the lockdown measures.
No other country has so far announced an observance on the scale of Spain’s 10-day mourning period, an event unprecedented since the country reinstated democratic rule in 1978.
Opposition parties had criticised Sanchez’s left-wing coalition government for not paying tribute to the victims of the pandemic as Spain’s high death toll became a point of political debate.
“They should have declared the mourning days ago,” Madrid resident Conchita Hernandez, 77, told The Associated Press news agency. Her husband, Agustin Alvarez, 77, compared the nearly 9,000 virus-related deaths in Madrid to the casualties during times of war.
“The mourning would have made more sense when we were all homebound, but I still think it makes a lot of sense,” Alvarez said.
China, where the virus emerged in late 2019 and has now officially killed 4,638 people, held a national day of mourning on April 4, while Italy, which has so far counted almost 32,900 deaths, mourned its victims on March 31.
And this week, the United States lowered its flags to half-mast for three days to remember its dead, who now number more than 98,900, the heaviest toll in the world.
Coronavirus
Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech is more than 90 percent effective in the first analysis, company reports
Pfizer and partner BioNTech said Monday that their vaccine against Covid-19 was strongly effective, exceeding expectations with results that are likely to be met with cautious excitement — and relief — in the face of the global pandemic.
The vaccine is the first to be tested in the United States to generate late-stage data. The companies said an early analysis of the results showed that individuals who received two injections of the vaccine three weeks apart experienced more than 90% fewer cases of symptomatic Covid-19 than those who received a placebo. For months, researchers have cautioned that a vaccine that might only be 60% or 70% effective.
The Phase 3 study is ongoing and additional data could affect results.
Read more via statsnews.com
The Premier League in England said on Monday that eight people had returned positive results in its latest round of COVID-19 tests conducted on players and staff last week.
The league said the individuals who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus would now self-isolate for 10 days.
“The Premier League can today confirm that between Monday, Oct. 12 and Sunday, Oct. 18, 1,575 players and club staff were tested for COVID-19. Of these, there were eight new positive tests,” the Premier League said in a statement.
A total of 42 people have tested positive for the virus in seven rounds of testing since the new campaign began on Sept. 12.
There have been more than 750,000 COVID-19 infections and over 43,000 deaths in the UK, according to a Reuters tally.
(Reuters/NAN)
Federal Government has warned that with the on-going #ENDSARS protests across the country, cases of COVID-19 will definitely increase in the coming weeks.
Issuing the warning in Abuja, the Chairman, Presidential Taskforce, PTF, on COVID-19 and Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Mr. Boss Mustapha, said despite the appreciable success recorded so far in the fight against COVID-19, the ongoing protests might spark up a second wave of the virus.
He said: “I can say it authoritatively that with the ongoing protests across the country, in the next two weeks the cases of COVID-19 would have increased. Each and everyone that attended the protests and did not put up any form of protection are likely going to spread the virus. When people contract the virus during the protest gathering, they will go back home and spread it.
“This is one of the reasons we must be extremely careful when we congregate because when you gather together in such an atmosphere where people don’t wear face masks or maintain social distance you are creating potential opportunities for carriers to spread the virus.
“So far we have done pretty well as a country but this protest is like a setback and we must avoid a situation where we will have resurgence. Countries that thought they have overcome are dealing with second wave. We are extremely lucky as a nation and we should be careful of any situation that can warrant second wave.”
Corroborating his views as reported by Vanguard, National Coordinator of PTF on COVID-19, Dr Sani Aliyu, said FCT and Lagos State have successfully tested one percent of their populations, while states such as Rivers, Plateau, Gombe were half way in achieving the one percent target.
“We urge other states to work hard in achieving this target of 1 percent testing because testing rate is still low in the country. Through our various member MDAs, ‘’We have trained at least 17,000 health works in infection prevention and control, laboratory operation and case management.
“In partnership with Federal Ministry of Heath we have added over 7,000 beds in more than 130 treatment centres, 250 intensive care unit beds through support from donors and the private sector,’’ he said.
On his part, the Minister of State for Health, Adeleke Mamora, said the ministry has distributed ventilator and oxygen to all federal and state hospitals.
He disclosed that one of the challenges federal hospitals were facing was irregular power supply which often leads to breakdown of equipment and disruption of services, “We receive the management of power holding to discuss way of having regular power supply to our teaching hospital and medical centres, this partnership will reduce overhead cost of the hospital,’’ he said.
He said their experience with the management of the pandemic revealed that many of the victims died could have been saved if they had access to services on time, adding that, during their intervention in Kano, ambulances were deployed to evacuate people in critical condition to the hospital.
Meanwhile, President of the Nigeria Medical Association, NMA, Prof Innocent Ujah, disclosed yesterday that no fewer than 1,031 doctors in Nigeria have been exposed to coronavirus in the country, while 16 mortality cases were recorded as of October 8, 2020. According to him, this puts the mortality rate at 4.98 percent.
Speaking at a press conference in Lagos to announce the NMA 2020 Physicians’ Week, with the theme ‘’Strategy for health system recovery during the Covid-19 pandemic in Nigeria” and sub-theme: “Dental caries: The four-pronged fork.” Ujah said of the 1,031 cases, 321 were confirmed, while 16 doctors were lost in the battle against the virus.
Ujah, who expressed sadness over the deaths of members, described their death as the prize they had to pay in obedience to the Hippocratic Oath of their profession. Stating that COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacies of health systems around the world, the NMA president said many health systems across the world were overwhelmed by the pandemic due to inadequate emergency preparedness and response, largely due to inadequate human resources, infrastructural deficit and medical consumables, including personal protective equipment and other protective equipment.
He pointed out that most countries, such as Nigeria, were suffering due to gross under-funding of the health sector. He said: “No disease has ever before laid bare the state of the country’s health sector like COVID-19. COVID-19 has revealed acute shortages of critical and lifesaving equipment such as ventilators and intensive care beds in our hospitals.”
Ujah added that the dire shortages of medical capacity has further put a spotlight on the poor state of health in Nigeria and distance to travel to ensure that health care was affordable and accessible to all citizens for Universal Health Coverage, UHC, to be achieved.
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