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US to authorise Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children above age 12 amidst hesitancy

By
Cleopatra Okohai
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The United States is expected to authorise the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children age 12 and up by early next week, according to US media reports.

Pfizer has applied for emergency use authorization for its Covid vaccine for children and teenagers between ages 12 and 15, according to CNN, citing a government official.

“The FDA will have to amend the emergency use authorization for the vaccine, but the process should be straightforward,” CNN reported.

The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to grant that approval by early next week. After the FDA decision, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee will meet to recommend how the vaccine should be used.

Read Also: COVID-19: Nigeria continues to record low infection figures

A spokeswoman for the FDA declined to give details on the approval timeline, telling The Washington Post: “We are working to review this request as quickly and transparently as possible.”

The Pfizer vaccine is currently authorized for people 16 and older in the United States.

The US pharmaceutical giant said in late March it had submitted data from a clinical trial of 2,260 12- to 15-year-olds that showed the vaccine was highly effective and well-tolerated.

Further testing on younger children is ongoing.

Moderna is conducting trials of its vaccine in teens, with results expected in the summer, as well as in younger children.

Johnson & Johnson is also planning pediatric trials for its vaccine.

Expanding vaccine authorization to include adolescents could open up the US mass vaccination program to millions more people.

The national vaccination rate peaked around April 11, according to official data, and although 55 percent of US adults now have had one or more doses all in a bid to seek immunity against Covid.

The people most eager to get their shots have, for the most part, already rolled up their sleeves and done so.

But vaccine hesitancy remains a major obstacle: a large percentage of US adults don’t plan to get the shot and could potentially refuse to get their children vaccinated.

Among Republican voters, 29 percent say they will never take the vaccine, compared to five percent of Democrats and nine percent of independents, according to a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

UN Experts Demand ‘Immediate Release’ Of Iranian Filmmaker

By
Koko Lawrence
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UN rights experts voiced alarm Tuesday at reports that imprisoned dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Nourizad was so ill he risked “serious complications and possible death”, demanding he be released immediately.

Nourizad, who has written and directed several films, has since 2019 been serving a prison sentence totalling over 17 years on charges of insulting Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.

“We are seriously concerned at the mistreatment of Mohammad Nourizad and his continued imprisonment for expressing his opinion,” six independent UN experts, including those on the human rights situation in Iran, on torture, and on the right to freedom of expression, said in a statement.

The experts, who are appointed by the United Nations but do not speak on its behalf, warned against “his continued detention despite medical professionals finding he cannot stay in prison given his serious health condition.”

“The resulting denial of adequate medical care may amount to torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” they said.

The experts, who also included the UN special rapporteurs on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, on the right to physical and mental health and on extrajudicial executions, pointed out that Nourizad had carried out hunger strikes in detention and refused to take medications to protest his imprisonment and his family’s mistreatment by the authorities.

“He has also reportedly attempted suicide in prison, and began to self-harm as a form of protest on February 19, 2021,” their statement said.

This was particularly worrying, it said, since he has been diagnosed with a heart condition and has frequently lost consciousness while in detention.

He also suffers from diabetes, according to Amnesty, which last month warned that Iranian authorities were “cruelly toying with the life” of Nourizad.

The UN experts said the filmmaker was transferred to Loghman Hakim Educational Hospital in Tehran on April 14 after fainting, and had been injected with a substance he did not know the content of and had not consented to.

“It is clear that Mohammad Nourizad is not in a medical state to remain in prison,” the experts said, pointing out that the Iranian judiciary’s own legal medical organisation and other medical professionals had reportedly found he should be released on medical grounds.

“The Iranian authorities must release him immediately in line with these medical opinions and give him free access to the required medical care and treatment,” they said.

COVID-19: Nigeria continues to record low infection figures

By
Cleopatra Okohai
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On the day Nigeria announced a travel ban on three countries experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases, the country continued its trend of recording low infection and casualty figure from the virus.

There were no fatalities recorded from COVID-19 in Nigeria on Sunday as the country reported its lowest daily infection in several months.

Nigeria recorded 14 new cases on Sunday, an update by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) shows.

The new figure raised the total number of infections in the country to 165,167.

According to the update, no new death was recorded from the virus which has already claimed 2,063 lives in the country.

This makes it the fourth consecutive day that nobody died from the disease in the country.

The number of deaths recorded from the virus has declined recently with only two deaths recorded in the last 19 days.

The 14 new cases were reported from Seven states; Osun-3, Ogun-3, Kaduna-3, Akwa Ibom-2, Abia-1, FCT-1 and Kwara-

A breakdown of the latest data shows that 252 people were discharged on Sunday after testing negative for the virus. This brings the total number of discharged persons after treatment to 155,361.

“Today’s report includes 248 community recoveries in Kwara State managed in line with guidelines,” the NCDC said.

Read Also: BudgIT exposes 316 duplicated projects worth N39.5bn in 2021 budget

Meanwhile, 7,743 infections are still active in the country, the infectious disease body said.

Since the pandemic broke out in Nigeria in February 2020, the country has carried out over 1.9 million tests.

The country commenced vaccination against the virus on March 5, beginning with health care workers.

Almost two months after, about 1.2 million people have received their first dose of the vaccines, according to data by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).

While Nigeria continues to experience low COVID-19 figures, the country is also taking steps to prevent imported cases from country’s battling with resurgence in COVID-19 cases.

On Sunday, Nigeria announced a ban on travels from Brazil, India and Turkey, countries currently battling with COVID-19 resurgence.

Bugging Out: EU Approves Beetle Larvae As Food

By
Koko Lawrence
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More insects are on their way to dinner plates in Europe under an agreement between EU countries to label them “innovative food” that is safe to eat, the European Commission said Tuesday.

The endorsement means the 27-nation bloc is close to adopting an EU law allowing residents and visitors to tuck into a dish featuring dried yellow mealworm, the larva of the mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor.

“The use of insects as an alternate source of protein is not new and insects are regularly eaten in many parts of the world,” the commission noted, announcing the decision.

It added that yellow mealworm must be labelled clearly as such when used in a food product, not least to alert people who might be allergic.

The insect can be used to make burgers, protein shakes and biscuits.

The commission said there are currently 11 other applications for insects to become “novel food” in the EU and they will be considered by the European Food Safety Authority.

The decision on yellow mealworms is expected to be formally adopted in coming weeks, the commission said.

While it noted that this is the first time an insect was being authorised as food in the EU, the commission did say that insects had previously been available for consumption in some member states.

But that was before a 2018 update to the EU regulation on novel foods that requires whole insects to be subject to approval.

Researchers have for years observed the high protein value of yellow mealworms, which contain required fat and amino acids. The larva can grow quickly in a variety of substances including brewer’s yeast, wheat bran, corn starch and potato flour.

They have already long been found in food markets in Southeast Asian countries.

Italy,G20 Look To Return Of Tourism

By
Koko Lawrence
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0

Italy is ready to welcome back travellers, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Tuesday after hosting a G20 meeting that put tourism at the heart of the global post-pandemic recovery.

“It’s time for you to book your holidays in Italy!” Draghi told reporters, promising to provide “clear and simple rules” to ensure visitors could travel around safely.

“The world longs to travel here. The pandemic has forced us to close down temporarily. But Italy is ready to welcome back the world.”

Home to Venice and Florence, Portofino and Capri, Italy had been the world’s fifth-most visited destination, but visitor numbers collapsed by more than 60 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Under rules in place until May 15, for example, tourists from the rest of Europe must self-isolate for five days upon arrival in Italy.

Draghi was speaking after an Italy-hosted virtual meeting of tourism ministers from the Group of 20 most powerful nations.

In a joint statement, they noted tourism was still one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, after countries around the world grounded flights and told citizens to stay at home.

“With nearly 62 million travel and tourism jobs lost globally, representing a drop of 18.5 percent, the outlook remains highly uncertain,” they said.

The statement added: “We emphasize that the resumption of travel and tourism is crucial for global economic recovery because of the direct and indirect economic impact this sector has on others.”

But they said the crisis was also an “opportunity to rethink tourism for the future”, with Draghi noting the importance of protecting the environment and local communities.

10-year-old Nigerian refugee again becomes national chess master (photos)

By
Cleopatra Okohai
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0

Who remembers Tani Adewumi, the Nigerian refugee in the US who secured the NY State chess championship in 2019, well, he has now won yet another competition to officially become a national chess master at 10.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who was one of Tani Adewumi’s early admirers, had also written two pieces on the youngster and mentioned him in his 2020 book, “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope,” enthusiastically tweeted the news on Sunday.

It was gathered that the game the 5th grader played to snag the national title was that of the Chess Club of Fairfield County (CCFC). It was earlier billed to hold on May 1, with Adewumi listed as one of the players to compete.

Tani Adewumi came into the global limelight in 2019 after he was discovered and described as a homeless chess genius.

According to the US chess federation, the national chess master title is for any player who reaches a “2200 rating”.

The US body overseeing chess competitions adds: “Less than one percent of rated players hold the title. An Original Life Master is a National Master who played 300 games with a rating [of] over 2200” points amassed from games.

In 2019, Adewunmi, whose family had fled Nigeria for the US over the Boko Haram crisis, made the headlines after winning the 2019 New York chess championship while living in a homeless center on religious asylum.

A GoFundMe page had been set up for him and a total of $254,448 was raised in his name, which helped the chess prodigy and his family to move into an apartment. 

Trevor Noah, South African TV host, was thereafter tapped to produce a movie which was to be adapted from three then-yet-to-be published books on how his family escaped terrorism to seek asylum in the US, against all odds.

His father, Kayode Adewumi, said he was beaming ear-to-ear when his fifth-grade son gained the chess master title after winning his latest championship in Fairfield, C.T. on Saturday. He now boasts a chess rating of a tremendous 2223 – whereas a 2200 point is needed to gain the chess master title.

“When he came in first, my heart burst out of my chest,” Adewumi told newsmen in a phone interview on Monday. “I was extremely happy.”

Although Adewumi calls Tani “just a normal kid” who loves watching basketball, he said, “By God’s grace, he wants to be the youngest grandmaster in the world.”

The 10-year-old still has a couple of years to make that happen, with that honour currently belonging to Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin, who was 12 years old when he became a grandmaster in 2003.

However, Tani is well on his way.

For the past several years, the young teen has regularly competed across the United States and is even being coached by Georgian chess Grandmaster Giorgi Kacheishvili.

Tani joined his school’s chess program in Manhattan and quickly fell in love with the strategy and the deep thinking involved, his father told Newsmen

But despite the boy going on to win accolades and beating out dozens of other young chess players across New York, his family couldn’t afford stable housing and were temporarily living in a homeless shelter.

Read Also: Nigeria’s visa policy worth emulation in Africa, says Tanzanian envoy

But after Kristof’s New York Times article, people inundated the family’s GoFundMe fundraiser with US$254,000, which partially allowed them to move to better lodging before moving to Port Jefferson, N.Y., where they currently reside.

In a recent Facebook post, Kristof noted that Tani was a prime example of how “talent is universal, but opportunity is not.” He said Tani was extremely fortunate that the shelter was in a school district where there even was a chess program.

In 2019, with the excess funds from the GoFundMe, the family have since set up a trust called the Tanitoluwa Adewumi Foundation, to help other children in similar circumstances.

Last year, the biography “My Name Is Tani” “and I believe in Miracles” based on their life was published and Tani’s story could even be on the silver screen one day after Paramount Pictures won the rights to his life.

Tani’s father and the rest of his family are thrilled to see how far they’ve come, and he hopes his son’s example inspires other refugee families across the world.

Kayode Adewumi, who is now a real estate salesman in Farmingville, N.Y, had three words for other newcomer families: “Keep hope alive.”

You Can Be A Medical Doctor And A Musician At The Same Time – Knii Lante

By
Koko Lawrence
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Ghanaian reggae/afro-pop musician who also doubles as a medical doctor, Knii Lante has advised young and upcoming musicians that it’s possible for them to add other professions to what they do.

According to him, one can become a medical doctor like him while still pursuing their music career.

Speaking in an interview on radio, the medical doctor said, “It’s possible to be a musician and at the same time a doctor or other profession.

“I have had no reservations about being labeled a reggae act but my horizon stretches further than that. I do different kinds of stuff as well and I’m proud of that,” he added.

Knii Lante revealed that he started music with afro-pop before he later delved into reggae by releasing a reggae album which even had some afrobeats songs on it.

Ghana’s National Film Authority Announces Partnership With Indie Rights

By
Koko Lawrence
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0

The National Film Authority (NFA) has entered into a partnership with leading American distribution company, Indie Rights.

The partnership is to help push Ghanaian film content to the rest of the world after President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched a USD$25 million Presidential film pitch series.

A statement by the NFA and copied to the GNA Entertainment said: “This important announcement is coming off the back of the launch of the Presidential film pitch series by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, where he reiterated the ultimate drive to position Ghana as a film hub in the region and to get Ghanaian content to the world.

“The Presidential Pitch Film Series is a pipeline facilitation program to help fuel the value chain of the film sector by providing a vibrant market place where great film projects within the Ghanaian film ecosystem can connect with investors, sponsors, agents, distributors, broadcasters, and platforms for business to happen.”

The statement added that the partnership makes it possible for IndieRights to offer the very best audience opportunities to the more than 800 filmmakers they work with especially during their yearly exhibits.

Indie Rights, one of the world’s leading distribution companies have partnerships with Amazon, Google, AppleTV, TubiTV, among others.

Generations, Rhythm City Actor Mahlubi Kraai Passes Away

By
Koko Lawrence
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0

The entertainment industry in South Africa is mourning the passing of actor, scriptwriter, director, and choreographer Mahlubi Kraai who passed away on Sunday at the age of 47.

News of the multi-talented veteran actor confirmed on Monday that Mahlubi had passed away in Rustenburg, North West.

Born in Mahikeng, Mahlubi has acted in a number of television productions including Generations, Isidingo, Mzansi, Soul City, Rhythm City, Ke Nako and Hillside.

Many will remember the actor as Lebo on the SABC1 sitcom Gauteng Maboneng, whete he played a car mechanic who miraculously inherits a fortune and a whole world of trouble to match.

Others may remember him for his starring role as Jakes in the drama series Mzansi, from 2004-2006.

Having studied for a National Diploma in Drama at Technikon Pretoria from 1995-1997, he has also performed in numerous theatre productions in the nineties, including Noqawuse, Sophiatown, Boesman and Lena, The Island, and others.

Fans were saddened by the news and sent messages of condolences on social media.

Driver Shortage, Looming Regulation Cloud Uber, Lyft Recovery

By
Koko Lawrence
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0

As U.S. customers gradually hail more rides after a year of pandemic restrictions, Uber Technologies Inc’s (UBER.N) and Lyft Inc’s (LYFT.O) recovery story is clouded by driver shortages and regulatory threats to have workers reclassified as employees.

U.S. President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of delivering benefits to gig workers and U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh last week intensified the debate, saying in an interview that “a lot of gig workers should be classified as employees.”

Shares in Uber and Lyft dropped as much as 8% and 12% respectively following Walsh’s comments, with the companies’ business dependent on low-cost flexible labor.

While a reclassification of independent contract workers is not foreseen quickly and some analysts expect a compromise between regulators and the companies, the threat poses a risk to Uber’s and Lyft’s growth and bottom line.

Wall Street is expecting the companies to show continued rider and revenue growth compared to the last quarters when Lyft and Uber report first-quarter results on Tuesday and Wednesday after the bell, respectively.

Investors on average expect Lyft to post nearly $560 million and Uber around $3.3 billion in revenue during the first three months of 2021, according to Refinitiv data.

In adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, Lyft is expected to report a $144 million loss and Uber a roughly $450 million loss.

Lyft has told investors it will be profitable on that metric by the end of the third quarter, Uber sees itself reaching it by the end of the fourth quarter as the recovery progresses.

Lyft said in mid-March it expects positive weekly year-over-year rider growth for the first time since the pandemic, while Uber said March marked the highest amount of ride-hail and food delivery gross bookings in the company’s history.

But the companies are struggling to serve the uptick in trip demand, with many U.S. drivers still unwilling to return to the road over safety and financial concerns, meaning the companies risk disgruntled customers or higher costs to incentivize drivers to return.

Uber has said it would invest an additional $250 million to boost driver earnings and offer payment guarantees, but some analysts say the companies might have to provide further financial commitments if the supply crunch persists.

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