By Reuters The first 165,000 of up to 7 million COVID-19 vaccine doses that MTN Group is donating to African countries have arrived in Ghana, the South African telecoms company said on Tuesday. MTN is donating $25 million to support the African Union’s vaccination program. The vaccines are intended to be distributed to health workers…
By Grace Kuria Nigerian scientists have developed two vaccines against COVID-19, the government secretary announced Tuesday. Boss Mustapha, who is also chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, said clinical trials for the new vaccines are underway. “The vaccines will be used after completing clinical trials and obtaining certification,” said Mustapha. “This is a…
By Grace Kuria Treating COVID-19 patients with Dexamethasone may have saved a million lives globally, according to NHS England. The widely-available and inexpensive steroid was discovered to reduce coronavirus deaths following a clinical trial at the University of Oxford nine months ago. Since then it is thought 22,000 lives have been saved in the UK…
By Grace Kuria Kenya Airways recorded a pretax loss of Ksh36.57 billion in 2020, nearly triple the previous year’s loss of Ksh12.9 billion. The airline announced on Tuesday that the huge loss was mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The airline’s basic loss per share jumped to 6.22 shillings in 2020 from 2.23 shillings in…
By XINHUA As the world commemorated the World Down Syndrome Day on March 21, a woman in the suburbs of the Ugandan capital Kampala is raising awareness about the genetic malformation in her community. Rosemary Nambooze, 39, after going through the challenges of raising a child suffering from Down syndrome for over 10 years, decided…
By AFP Swiss pharma giant Roche announced Tuesday promising results from clinical trials of an anti-Covid cocktail developed with U.S. biotech firm Regeneron. The results of the Phase 3 trial showed that the combination of the antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab “reduced hospitalisation or death by 70 percent in non-hospitalised patients with COVID-19,” it said in…
By AFP Children who are 10 years old and younger produce more antibodies in response to coronavirus infection than adolescents and adults, a study has shown. The authors of the paper, which appeared in JAMA Network Open, said the finding helped illuminate why children are less susceptible to severe COVID-19 than adults – though this…
By Daniel Plafker Originally introduced by colonialists in the early 20th century to control garbage, Indian house crows have become an unwelcome fixture of coastal Kenya’s wildlife community. Loud, large and highly disruptive, the winged menace has ballooned to catastrophic numbers on the country’s Indian Ocean coast. With no natural predators, this invasive species has…
By CGTN Africa South Africa concluded the sale of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines it had acquired but did not use, to other African Union (AU) member states, the ministry of health said on Sunday. The government suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine rollout program last month after a study by the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg pointed to a…
By Grace Kuria Following the death of six climbing lions in Queen Elizabeth National Park, security and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) officials have organised a meeting with the local leaders on Tuesday, to deliberate on measures to safeguard wild life. The lions were found dead on Friday evening, about 500 metres on River Ishasha on…
