Burundi Coronavirus Updates
RegionWeek Newsletter Vol III, Issue #146 | Monday, November 9, 2020
Dear Readers,
The last week's report by the Burundi Ministry of Health’s spokesperson announced that there are 25 new positive cases for Coronavirus recorded between November 1 and 7, 2020. Of the 25 new cases, 19 were from abroad. This brings the total number of people so far infected by the Covid-19 disease to 582.
Among the new cases, 12 are people who arrived in Burundi from Tanzania, others from Kenya, Norway, Uganda, Somalia, and Sweden. The rest are contact persons, according to the health authority. Since March 2020, the report confirms that 549 patients have been cured, 62 still remain bedridden while the country has so far suffered only one death.
Burundi President in quarantine
President Evariste Ndayishimiye and First Lady Angeline Ndayubahe, are in a quarantine of 72 hours. It was a decision taken on November 7 when they returned from a five-day state visit to Equatorial Guinea.
“We come from a country where the coronavirus still exists, you never know, we protected ourselves when we were there, even today we continue to protect ourselves. But you never know ”, declared President Evariste Ndayishimiye.
He said the decision to quarantine himself is part of the continuity of the campaign against covid-19. He took the opportunity to call on all travelers, in particular those coming from countries where the pandemic still exists, to respect the preventive measures against the coronavirus.
'Breakthrough' vaccine
The American drug company Pfizer said Monday that early analysis showed its vaccine candidate for Covid-19 is more than 90 percent effective at preventing infection according to NBC news. It uses a never-before-approved technology called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to produce an immune response in people who are vaccinated.
The news from the U.S. pharmaceutical giant and its German partner, BioNTech SE, was welcomed as a major step in the fight against a virus that has plagued the global economy, upended daily life for billions, and killed 1.26 million people — nearly 240,000 in the United States alone.
As CNN reminds, the US federal government has invested $1.95 billion in Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine but is not directly working to help its development.
The mRNA vaccine approach uses genetic material called mRNA to trick cells into producing bits of protein that look like pieces of the virus. The immune system learns to recognize and attack those bits and, in theory, would react fast to any actual infection.
The global total of confirmed coronavirus cases has passed 50 million following record numbers of new cases in several countries. A second wave of the virus has accounted for a quarter of all cases but the true figure is thought to be higher because of insufficient testing in many countries. More than 1.25m people have now died after contracting the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Thanks for reading
Fabrice Iranzi, RegionWeek.com
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