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Nigeria on Monday recorded 241 cases of COVID-19. Here are five updates about the pandemic this Tuesday. 

Pfizer asked to sell more COVID pills to developing countries

Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer advocacy organisation, has asked Pfizer to supply more doses of Paxlovid, its COVID-19 pill, to developing countries this year.

In a letter sent to Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, Public Citizen requested the drugmaker to reserve at least two-thirds of supplies to developing countries at a reasonable price.

Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s access to medicines programme, said vaccine inequality still remains a threat.

“This is going to be one of the biggest drug access issues of the next year. It’s going to be a tremendously disheartening replay of vaccine inequity, at least initially, and a lot of us will be working to mitigate that,” Maybarduk said.

One person died of COVID every 12 seconds last week, says WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says in the past week, one person died of COVID every 12 seconds.

Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, spoke on Monday at the 150th session of the agency executive board meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

The DG noted that it has been two years since the organisation declared COVID a global health emergency, adding that almost 350 million cases have now been reported, and more than 5.5 million deaths recorded.

“On average last week, 100 cases were reported every three seconds, and somebody lost their life to COVID-19 every 12 seconds,” he said.

Nigeria records 241 COVID cases 

Nigeria has recorded 241 cases of COVID-19 across the country.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says the fresh cases were logged in eight states and the federal capital territory (FCT).

The following is a breakdown of the cases.

Taraba-98
Rivers-66
Lagos-35
FCT-20
Delta-13
Kwara-3
Abia-2
Nasarawa-2
Plateau-2

The agency said 596 people were discharged, while two persons died of COVID complications.

The NCDC said the 98 cases in Taraba include 74 backlogs from January 1 to 23.

With the new cases, Nigeria now has 252,428 confirmed cases, 227,004 recoveries and 3,126 deaths.

US to start distributing 400m free N95 masks 

The United States will commence the distribution of 400 million free N95 masks to pharmacies and community health centres this week as part of efforts to fight the spread of the Omicron COVID variant.

Surgical and fabric masks are still extensively used, however, N95 and KN95 masks are regarded to be more protective against COVID.

The government has also launched a website where residents can order four free at-home rapid COVID tests through the postal service.

COVID is biological threat to national security, says Munguno 

Babagana Monguno, national security adviser (NSA), says the COVID-19 pandemic is a biological threat to national security.

Munguno spoke on Monday at the bio-risk management and public health emergency preparedness, organised by the office of NSA in collaboration with WHO in Abuja.

Represented by Aminu Lawal, director, policy and strategy, Monguno said the pandemic has “left in its wake, loss of lives, economic losses as well as stalled programmes and activities due to strict adherence to COVID-19 protocols, amongst others”.

“The aim of the training is to acquaint participants, who are largely public health practitioners from Security and Law Enforcement Agencies, with emerging biological threats to national security,” he said.

“With fourth wave of COVID-19 cases receding across Nigeria, we hope to consolidate gains of this meeting to provide the basis for future engagements as we seek to build a viable force to curtail any threats to national security emanating from biological threats.”