Daily COVID Tracker: NCDC logs 42 cases, zero fatality

Nigeria on Wednesday recorded 42 cases of COVID-19 infections. Here are five updates about the pandemic this Thursday. 

WHO announces new facility for training of countries to make COVID vaccines

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says a hub has been established in South Korea to train low and middle-income countries to produce their own COVID-19 vaccines.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, disclosed this at a news briefing on Wednesday.

The agency said it is expanding the COVID-19 vaccine project to five nations – Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Serbia and Vietnam.

WHO had selected Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia to receive technology that is needed to produce MRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccines.

Tedros said the South Korean facility was already providing training to companies in the country and will now be able to accept international trainees.

The new facility will share mRNA technology being developed by WHO and partners in South Africa.

“Vaccines have helped to change the course of the COVID-19 pandemic but this scientific triumph has been undermined by vast inequities in access to these life-saving tools,” Tedros said.

“Currently, bio-manufacturing training facilities are located mainly in high-income countries … putting them out of reach for many lower-income countries,” he said.

Italy COVID state of emergency will be lifted on March 31, says PM

Mario Draghi, Italian prime minister, says the country will end its COVID-19 state of emergency on March 31.

Draghi said normalcy is gradually returning to the country — after more than two years of the COVID pandemic.

The state of emergency was established in 2020 to allow officials to bypass bureaucracy and impose rules via decrees.

Nigeria logs 42 infections

Forty-two fresh COVID-19 infections have been reported across the country.

The new infections were logged in four states and the federal capital territory (FCT).

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) disclosed this in an update for February 23, 2022.

A breakdown of the infections is shown below:

Lagos-25
FCT-13
Kaduna-2
Kano-1
Oyo-1

The agency said 15 people were discharged after they recovered from the infection. No person was reported to have died from COVID complications.

With the newly-confirmed cases, a total of 254,394 infections have been recorded with 230,861 recoveries and 3,142 fatalities.

Hong Kong introduces vaccine passports, tightens COVID rules

Hong Kong has introduced vaccine passports mandating people aged 12 and above to have at least one COVID-19 vaccination.

Residents are required to present their vaccine report to enter venues including supermarkets, malls and eating places.

The country had said it was overwhelmed by the COVID pandemic and accepted assistance from China.

“Hong Kong is now going through a really dire epidemic scenario, which continues to deteriorate quickly,” the government in a statement on Thursday.

“Hong Kong’s healthcare system, manpower, anti-epidemic services and sources… will quickly be inadequate to deal with the large variety of newly confirmed instances detected day by day.”

Iceland to remove all COVID-19 restrictions on Friday

Iceland says plans are underway to lift all COVID-19 restrictions by Friday.

The country’s ministry of health disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday.

“Widespread societal resistance to COVID-19 is the main route out of the epidemic,” the statement reads.