Daily COVID Tracker: Nigeria reports 27 infections in five states

Nigeria on Tuesday recorded 27 cases of COVID-19. Here are five updates about the pandemic. 

Booster dose of Moderna vaccine may be needed sooner than six months, says study

A study has suggested that a shorter time interval will be needed for the administration of the Moderna COVID vaccine booster.

“Our results suggest that third doses may be needed sooner than 6 months after the second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to protect against omicron infection,” Hung Fu Tseng, a researcher with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California department of research and evaluation, said in a statement.

Researchers found that Moderna’s two-dose vaccine was 44 percent effective against omicron infection within three months and effectiveness “quickly declined thereafter”.

Three doses were 72 percent effective against omicron infection within two months.

Hong Kong mandates testing for entire population amid worsening outbreak

Hong Kong’s government will mandate coronavirus testing for its entire population turning schools and other facilities into testing sites.

The programme will begin in March, with groups to be tested by birth dates, and noncompliance will be punished with a fine, the government announced.

Carrie Lam, the territory’s chief executive, said every resident of Hong Kong will have to be tested three times.

“We are talking about an emergency,” Lam said.

“Given the current circumstances, we must do it, even if there are legal constraints. This is the mindset we need to have if we are fighting a battle.”

Iran returns COVID vaccines manufactured in US

Iran has returned 820,000 donated COVID-19 doses because they were manufactured in the United States.

The doses were among roughly a million of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine donated to the country by Poland.

“But when the vaccines arrived in Iran, we found out that 820,000 doses of them which were imported from Poland were from the United States,” Mohammad Hashemi, an official in Iran’s health ministry, said.

Hashemi added that “after coordination with the Polish ambassador to Iran, it was decided that the vaccines would be returned”.

In 2020, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said American and British vaccines were “forbidden” in the country.

New COVID cases fell 21 percent around the world in past week, says WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the number of new coronavirus cases around the world fell by 21 percent in the past week.

In its weekly pandemic report, WHO said there were more than 12 million new COVID-19 infections last week.

The number of new COVID-19 deaths fell 8 percent to about 67,000 worldwide, the first time that weekly deaths have fallen since early January.

The Western Pacific was the only region that saw an increase in COVID-19 cases, with a 29 percent jump, while the number of infections elsewhere dropped significantly.

The highest number of new COVID-19 cases were in Russia, Germany, Brazil, the US and South Korea.

Nigeria logs 27 new cases of COVID-19

Nigeria on Tuesday recorded 27 cases of COVID-19 across the country.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says the new infections were recorded in four states and federal capital territory (FCT).

A breakdown of the infections showed that Lagos logged 12 cases of COVID-19, followed by the FCT with eight and Katsina with five. Kano and Rivers recorded one case each.

The NCDC data showed that 53 persons were discharged after they recovered from the infection.

There were no fatalities on Tuesday.

With the new infections, Nigeria now has a total of 254,352 cases, 230,846 recoveries and 3,142 fatalities.