UK Plans Vaccine Roll-out As Christmas Gift

• NCDC Confirms 94 New COVID-19 Cases

BY VICTOR OSOWOCHI – On the day that Pifzer announced breakthrough in COVID-19 vaccine gained global attention, cheering news came from the United Kingdom (UK) that health authorities could commence Coronavirus vaccine distribution before Christmas.

England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Prof Jonathan Van-Tam has hailed the news as a ‘significant scientific breakthrough’ in the country’s vaccine production process.

This is as the Nigeria Centre For Disease Control (NCDC) said 94 new cases of the virus infections were recorded in the country on Monday, November 9, 2020

On its verified website, the Centre indicated that 937 of the 58,795 people tested for COVID-19 between November 1 and November 8 reported positive results.

The statistics also showed that the 937 cases reported in the first week of November were slightly higher than the 923 recorded between October 25 and October 31, 2020.

Furthermore, available records showed that NCDC harvested about 58,795 samples for testing between October 25 and October 31, as against the 20,165 samples tested between November 1 and November 8, 2020

In giving highlights of happenings on November 9, 2020, the Centre reported 94 new confirmed cases and four (4) deaths in the country.

“Till date, 64184 cases have been confirmed, 60069 cases have been discharged and 1158 deaths have been recorded in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory

“The 94 new cases are reported from seven (7) states – Lagos (50), FCT (24), Kwara (9), Edo (4), Kaduna (3), Ondo (2) and Plateau (2)”, the NCDC said

In Britain, despite cautioning the public of likely hurdles to come, Prof Van-Tam said news that large-scale trials showing the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate to be 90% effective is “very exciting”.

The Professor of Medcine also warned that no vaccine would come soon enough to stop significant restrictions on public life during the second wave.

“I’m hopeful … but not yet certain that we could begin to see some vaccine by Christmas,” he said.

According to him. the progress was also significant for other vaccines in development, adding; “Almost all of the vaccines coming also target the S protein.”