Headline News

7, December 2020

UK prepares to administer first doses of Covid-19 vaccine ⁰

Shipments of the coronavirus vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech were delivered Sunday in the U.K. in super-cold containers, two days before it goes public in an immunisation program that is being closely watched around the world.

Around 800,000 doses of the vaccine were expected to be in place for the start of the immunisation program on Tuesday, a day that Health Secretary Matt Hancock has reportedly dubbed as “V-Day,” a nod to triumphs in World War II.

“To know that they are here, and we are amongst the first in the country to actually receive the vaccine and therefore the first in the world, is just amazing,” said Louise Coughlan, joint chief pharmacist at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, just south of London.

“I’m so proud,” she said after the trust, which runs Croydon University Hospital, took delivery of the vaccine.

Last week, the U.K. became the first country to authorise the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine for emergency use. In trials, the vaccine was shown to have around 95% efficacy.

Vaccinations will be administered starting Tuesday at around 50 hospital hubs in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will also begin their vaccination rollouts the same day.

Governments and health agencies around the world will be monitoring the British vaccination program, which will take months, to note its successes and failures and adjust their own plans accordingly.

The U.S. hopes to start vaccinations later this month. British regulatory authorities are also examining data on the vaccines from American biotechnology company Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford University.

Russia on Saturday began vaccinating thousands of doctors, teachers and others at dozens of centres in Moscow with its Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, which was approved over the summer after being tested in only a few dozen people.

Patients 80 and above among first to receive jabs

The excitement in Britain, which has Europe’s highest virus-related death toll at more than 61,000, was palpable.

“Despite the huge complexities, hospitals will kickstart the first phase of the largest scale vaccination campaign in our country’s history from Tuesday,” said Professor Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director.

Patients aged 80 and above who are already attending hospitals as outpatients and those being discharged after a stay in the hospital will be among the first to receive the jab. Hospitals will also start inviting over 80s in for a vaccine shot and will work with nursing homes to book staff into vaccination clinics.

Any appointments not taken up will be offered to those health workers deemed to be at the highest risk of Covid-19. Everyone who is vaccinated will need a booster jab 21 days later.

Buckingham Palace refused to comment on speculation that Queen Elizabeth II, 94, and her 99-year-old husband, Prince Philip, will soon be vaccinated and then make it public, a move that could reassure anyone nervous about getting a vaccination.

“Our goal is totally to protect every member of the population, Her Majesty, of course, as well,” Dr. June Raine, chief executive of Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which authorized the vaccine, told the BBC.

The U.K. has secured 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which can cover 20 million people. Since the British government will only immunise people over 16, around 55 million people in the U.K. will be eligible. In total, Britain has procured 357 million doses of seven vaccine candidates, including 100 million of the much cheaper Oxford vaccine, which has a lower efficacy rate than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Complicated delivery

Now that the first tranche of the vaccine has arrived from Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Belgium, checks are being conducted by a specialist medical logistics company to ensure there was no damage in transit. This could take up to a day.

Each box containing the vaccines, which includes five packs of 975 doses, will need to be opened and unpacked manually at specially licensed sites. After that, the vaccines will then be made available to hospitals.

Delivering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is complicated because it needs to be stored at super-chilled temperatures: about minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit). Fortunately, the vaccine is stable at normal refrigerator temperatures, between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius (35.6 to 46.4 F), for a few days, meaning it can be stored locally. After defrosting the vaccine, which takes a few hours, additional time is required to prepare it to be given in a shot.

Public Health England has secured 58 special Twin Guard ultra-low temperature freezers that provide sufficient storage for approximately five million doses. The fridges, which are not portable, each hold around 86,000 doses.

The vaccine won’t just be provided by hospitals. Local doctors’ offices and other local health care centres are being put on standby to start delivering the vaccine, with a small number expected to do so the week of Dec. 14. More medical practices in more parts of the country will be phased in during December and in the coming months.

There are plans for vaccination centres treating large numbers of patients in sports areas and conference centres and for local pharmacies to be able to offer the jabs as they do with annual influenza shots.

Although nursing home residents top the prioritisation list given to the British government by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, they won’t be getting the vaccinations straight away, as the vaccine packs of 975 doses cannot yet be divided, making it very difficult to deliver vaccines to individual care homes.

The NHS hopes authorities will soon approve a safe way of splitting up the dose packs so the shots can get to nursing homes during December.

During the first phase of the immunisation program, Britain has created nine separate groups in its prioritisation list down to those aged 50 and above. Overall, it hopes that up to 99% of people most at risk of dying from Covid-19 will have been immunised during the first phase.

Source: AP

7, December 2020

Ghana set for tight presidential election as old rivals compete ⁰

More than 17 million people are eligible to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana on Monday with the race for the top job expected to be a close-run fight between incumbent Nana Akufo-Addo and longtime opponent John Mahama.

Nestled along the Gulf of Guinea, Ghana — long a beacon of democracy and stability in west Africa — has ensured peaceful transfers of power on seven occasions since it returned to democracy nearly 30 years ago.

The two major parties have always accepted electoral outcomes and pursued any grievances through the courts.

To ensure its continued tradition of peaceful polls, Akufo-Addo, 76, and Mahama, 62, on Friday signed a symbolic peace pact.

They are among 12 candidates, including three women, who are running.

“In view of the happenings on the continent, and, indeed in West Africa, the entire world is looking up to us to maintain our status as a beacon of democracy, peace and stability,” Akufo-Addo said in a televised address on Sunday evening.

Voters will cast their ballots for a new president and members of parliament for 275 constituencies between 7:00 am and 5:00 pm at 38,000 polling stations across the nation.

Key issues include unemployment, infrastructure, education and health.

Ghana has made giant strides over the past two decades, becoming the world’s second-largest cocoa-producing country, but many still live in extreme poverty with scarce access to clean water or electricity.

Hit hard by the pandemic, growth in the nation of 30 million people is expected to fall this year to its lowest in three decades, to 0.9 percent according to the International Monetary Fund, a steep decline from 6.5 percent growth in 2019.

Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Mahama of the National Democratic Congress party (NDC) have faced each other at the ballot box three times already.

The incumbent has been given high marks for his handling of the pandemic and his record on free education and improving access to electricity.

But he has disappointed some in his performance on tackling graft — the key issue on which he was elected four years ago.

Despite this, corruption is a difficult issue for Mahama to latch onto, as he himself left office under a cloud of graft allegations.

Mahama has also been criticised for poor economic decisions and racking up unsustainable debts.

But the skilled communicator has brushed aside the criticism, making ambitious promises to build infrastructure, create jobs and modernise the country.

A bold move by Mahama was picking former education minister Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang as running mate, the first woman on the ticket of a major party.

The winner will have to secure 50 percent of votes plus one. Results could be known as early as 24 hours after polls close, although the electoral commission said the time frame was not set in stone.

Source: AFP

7, December 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: The regional election is a non-event ⁰

From time immemorial, elections are designed to bring about change in a country or to pacify a population or an opposition that has been calling for change, but in Cameroon, elections have remained a tool of dominance by the ruling party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) also known as the crime syndicate made in the same mold as the Sicilian Mafia.

For many decades, the CPDM has won every election in Cameroon not through the ballot boxes but through massive fraud orchestrated well before the polling day.

The party writes the election rules, it is a participant in the game and it serves as the jury and judge after the exercise. The country’s election commission is replete with ruling party officials and the constitutional council that is supposed to mediate in the event of any foul play has been a tool in the hands of the ruling party designed to ensure that members of the ruling party emerge victorious.

In the event of any post-electoral contests or demonstrations, the government releases the military like bees on the protesters which sometimes results in the killing of hundreds and maiming of thousands of Cameroonians.

After the 2018 presidential election, the opposition party leader who clearly won the election, Professor Maurice Kamto, has been the subject of government harassment. He has either been hauled to jail, threatened with death or put on house arrest for long periods of time.

The country’s hastily written anti-terrorism law of 2014, is the legal instrument the dictatorial Yaounde regime has been using to frustrate or jail its opponents.

Since the last presidential election, the country has been in the grip of an unrelenting political crisis that is threatening to strangulate the economy and bring down a regime that is clearly on its last leg.

Many analysts have been hoping that the imbecile, corrupt, decaying and inefficient government in the country’s capital will see the writing on the wall and on the basis of that, will make some concessions and rewrite a constitution that clearly belongs to the ash heap of history.

Strangely, the ruling party has continued with its unpalatable comedy of errors and arrogance that has already resulted in many preventable deaths, especially in the country’s two English-speaking regions where an active insurgency has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

The regional elections held in the country on Sunday, December 7, 2020, have simply underscored that the government is unrepentant and unwilling to mend its ways so that peace, stability and economic prosperity can return to a country that was once touted as an oasis of peace in a desert of political chaos due to the many civil wars that have dogged its neighbors over the last four decades.

Sunday’s elections, falsely dubbed as regional elections, were won even before they took place. The elections do not require the participation of the entire population. Only municipal councilors are required to vote and 95% of the councils are held by the ruling party because opposition parties had boycotted municipal elections on the grounds that the rules were flawed and designed to favor the ruling crime syndicate that has been in power for four decades with no real results to show for its existence.

In the country’s two English-speaking regions, the elections were viewed as a non-event. The country’s English-speaking Diaspora, in collaboration with the USA-based Interim Government, had called for ghost towns in a bit to foil the government’s outlandish and diabolic plan.

The entire Southern Cameroons has been like a real ghost town over the last three days with the population staying at home.

In many towns, even the ruling party councilors were scared of stepping out to vote as separatist fighters are still making the laws in that part of the country.

Separatists, who have been battling the Yaoundé government for almost four years, had issued a stern warning to any councilors who would dare to vote against the will of the people. In their view, no such elections should take place in the region.

In Southern Cameroons, the ruling CPDM has been outlawed and anybody seen militating for the ruling party is considered an enabler and must be dealt with according to the rules of the USA- based Interim Government headed by interim president Dabney Yerima who is sitting in for President Julius Ayuk Tabe who has been in the dirty dungeons of East Cameroon for almost three years following an illegal kidnapping jointly organized by Cameroon and Nigeria.

In the weeks leading to the elections, separatists had clearly informed the population and government officials that the death penalty decreed three years ago in Washington DC was still standing and this was rapidly followed by the killing of three army soldiers in Ndian Division, whence hails the country’s ineffective and emasculated Prime Minister, Dion Ngute.

Similarly, the separatists also informed the Cameroon Concord News Group via a voice note that more killings had been scheduled, adding that they were keeping their eyes on traditional rulers and municipal councilors who are having political intercourse with the corrupt CPDM.

According to the separatists, it has been alleged that some hungry Southern Cameroonians are in cahoots with the corrupt regime to bring down the revolution. The separatists have vowed to take out any person or persons who have been identified as promoting the government’s campaign of corruption and marginalization.

Top on the list provided to the Cameroon Concord News Group are: former Prime Minister, Peter Mafany Musonge; Senate Vice-President, George Tabetando; Prime Minister Dion Ngute; former Prime Minister Yang Philemon; the ever rambling and hungry former minister of the environment, Elvis Ngole Ngole; the inefficient and corrupt primary education minister, Nalova Lyonga Egbe; and all the senators and members of parliament from Southern Cameroons, most of whom are currently in exile in Yaoundé.

The separatists have vowed that theirs will be the kingdom of death and they will stop at nothing to enforce the law.

The separatists have also urged all the chiefs and fons who have fled the two English-speaking regions of the country not to return, as they are wanted dead or alive.

They are charged with enabling the enemy and the punishment in Southern Cameroons for such an offense is the death penalty. There is no commutation of such penalties in the newly minted “country.”

Sunday’s elections have only made things worse for Southern Cameroonian politicians in particular and the country in general. As the government doubles down on its approach to governance, so too are the separatists who have vowed to cleanse the region of any blacklegs who have sold their souls to the devil.

The separatists are more angered by the new ruling party’s approach where Paul Biya, the corrupt head of state’s pictures is being posted all over the place.

The 87-year-old and ailing Biya is bedridden and with the Coronavirus spreading like wildfire in Western countries, the government cannot fly him out of the country.

The separatists say that they will not tolerate the government’s “photocracy”, a system of governance where is a dying man’s picture keeps on representing him in events.

While Sunday’s elections have ended, Cameroonians are very sure that the political crisis will continue to hurt the economy and blight their lives.

Biya’s greed and inefficiency have brought untold hardship and death to Cameroonians.

His politics and policies are hurting the country and with his departure imminent, it is obvious that the country is heading to a post-Biya disaster which can only be preempted by the international community.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Mulheim an der Ruhr

7, December 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Amba fighters enforce the death penalty in Widikum ⁰

A few hours after the polls closed in Cameroon’s regional elections, a municipal councilor from Widikum, Momo Division, Northwest Region, Encho Elias, has been shot dead shortly after having voted in the fake elections organized by the corrupt Yaounde government.

It has been reported that the councilor and some of his colleagues had voted and were returning to Bamenda when the Southern Cameroonian fighters decided to enforce the death penalty decreed by the Interim Government.

Also, Reverend Father Anthony Viban of Akum, in the North West region, was attacked by armed men who opened fire on his car as the Southern Cameroonian fighters were seeking to enforce the law.

Sources on the ground said the man of God was on his way to mass when it happened. It should be underscored that this is not the first time that a priest has been attacked. The retired archbishop of Douala, Christian Cardinal Tumi, was recently kidnapped by gunmen who later released him after the gunmen found out that the man of God was a free thinker.

Meanwhile, Fon Sehm Mbinglo of Nso surprised many when he showed up at a polling station in Kumbo to vote.

The traditional ruler who spoke shortly after voting under heavy security said the separatists were ruining the country, adding that he was working towards bringing peace back to the land.

The separatists have already declared that they would enforce the death penalty very soon in Kumbo and the Fon’s name is first on the list.

Also, there was shooting in Nveh in Kumbo, Bui Division in the North West region which unfortunately did not stop the voting.

Sources say some chiefs and councilors across Southern Cameroons were transported to the polling centers in military vehicles just to prove that the elections took place in normal circumstances.

More will be yours as Cameroon Concord News Group gets more details.

6, December 2020

US: Dr. Eyong Eyong Ebot announces ground-breaking new book on COVID-19 ⁰

MED-CHAINS & COVID – 19: Innovative Solutions for Pandemics is the groundbreaking new book by Dr. Eyong, offering the medical community new insight into COVID-19 and previous pandemics. Rather than quarreling over the inadequacies and inconsistencies of current pandemic practices, Dr. Eyong’s new book offers his tangible and innovative solutions on how to approach, analyze and handle a pandemic crisis.

His thoroughly researched approach to pandemics employs the expertise of respected medical researchers, acclaimed scientists, and innovative medical device developers across the industry.

By employing their combined medical wisdom, Dr. Eyong provides feasible solutions for preparing, managing, and the ultimate goal of preventing a pandemic, such as COVID-19, from occurring in the future.

The book is published in ten languages – English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Latin, Japanese.

We want it to be accessible so that everyone can read it. All proceeds from the book will go to charities that help kids who lost a parent during this pandemic.

6, December 2020

Record US virus cases as reports say British queen to get vaccine soon ⁰

The United States notched a record number of coronavirus cases in 24 hours for the third day running, as it was reported that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II will get a vaccine within weeks.

A tally by Johns Hopkins University showed the world’s worst-hit country — which has seen a dramatic virus resurgence in recent weeks — reached nearly 230,000 new infections and 2,527 Covid-related deaths on Saturday alone.

For two weeks, the US has regularly topped 2,000 deaths per day, as it had in the spring at the height of the first wave of the country’s outbreak.

Source: AFP

6, December 2020

French Cameroun: Four civilians killed in Boko Haram raids ⁰

At least four civilians have been killed between Thursday and Friday by terror group Boko Haram in Cameroon’s Far North region, local authorities said on Friday.

The traditional ruler of Wemdeley village was killed overnight into Friday, while three other persons were killed early Thursday in Talla Massali village when Boko Haram invaded the localities, authorities confirmed.

The terrorists who came on motorcycles also made away with foodstuffs and kidnapped at least two people during the raids, according to local sources.

The Boko Haram group has been active in Cameroon’s Far North region since 2014, posing enormous humanitarian and governance challenges until this day.

Source: Xinhaunet

6, December 2020

French Cameroun: Social media a major factor in domestic tensions ⁰

Social media in Cameroon are heightening political and ethnic tensions unleashed by the disputed 2018 presidential election – that’s according to a report by the International Crisis Group. The ICG says social media platforms, especially Facebook, should improve filtering toxic content and promote verified pages to reduce the tensions.

The ICG report says Cameroon is already facing serious security challenges and should find a way to ease political tensions and stop offensive language, such as ethnic slurs, that are causing the central African country to sink into violence.

Arrey Elvis Ntui, the ICG’s senior analyst for Cameroon, says hate speech and inter-ethnic tensions have increased since the October 2018 poll. He says the hate speech problem could endanger Cameroon’s stability.

“This period has also been marked by a lot of street protests. The country is currently dealing with a separatist insurgency in its Anglophone regions. Also, the army is dealing with the Boko Haram insurgency in the far north of the country with nearly daily attacks. Cameroon cannot simply afford to allow the ethnic and political tensions it is facing to rise to levels where they could constitute inter community violence,” Ntui said.

President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 38 years, was declared the winner of the elections. His victory is still contested by opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who insists he, not Biya, prevailed in the poll.

Ntui says Cameroon can avoid a slide into instability by reforming its electoral system.

“[The International] Crisis Group is proposing that Cameroon should strengthen its institutions which are responsible for addressing discrimination and improving its policy of living together. Some of these include discussions with the extra-parliamentary opposition in order to review the electoral system to make it more acceptable,” he said.

Ntui said the ruling CPDM party and the opposition should take measures to address the excesses of their supporters on social media, especially Facebook. He added that Facebook itself should also help check inflammatory language, provocative content and fake news which, he said, contribute to inflaming ethnic and political tension in the country.

Government spokesperson Rene Emmanuel Sadi said there is growing hate speech due to social media. He blamed opposition parties that he says want to weaken Biya’s rule.

“The government of the republic appeals to the majority of the Cameroonian people who have never allowed themselves to be misguided by unscrupulous politicians. The government through my voice exhorts Cameroonian men and women at home and abroad to thwart destabilizing maneuvers wherever they come from,” Sadi said.

Thursday’s report comes at a time when NGOs and journalism groups in Cameroon are warning against the use of media organs to propagate hate speech.

Rose Obah, the national coordinator of the Cameroon Community Media Network, said journalists should not be used as propaganda tools.

“We just come in to advise our members of our Cameroon Community Media Network as well as other journalists to be the first persons to [exercise] some kind of censorship around hate speech and fake news. Such words are unhealthy. Such words just come in to incite more violence and definitely with our main tool, peace journalism, we use it to encourage reporters and editors to encourage a peaceful society,” Obah said.

The ICG says President Biya should be wary of leaving behind a country riven with fighting and separatist sentiment in Anglophone areas but also by wider tensions, endangering Cameroon’s relatively amicable inter-ethnic relations.

Source: VOA

5, December 2020

France-Afrique: Military officer elected head of Mali’s interim legislature ⁰

Mali’s interim legislature on Saturday elected Colonel Malick Diaw, a member of the military junta that toppled president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August, as its president.

The 121-seat body known as the National Transition Council was meeting for its inaugural session in the capital Bamako, and is a key part of the post-coup interim government apparatus in Mali.

Young army officers in the conflict-ridden Sahel state toppled president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on August 18 after weeks of anti-government protests.

Under the threat of international sanctions, the officers between September and October handed power to an interim government, which is meant to rule for 18 months before staging elections.

Figures with army links dominate this interim government, however, and anger over their prominent role is growing.

Coup leader Colonel Assimi Goita was elected interim vice president, for example, and retired army colonel Bah Ndaw was also elected interim president.

Members of the defence and security forces have 22 seats in the transition council, according to a government decree, while political parties, civil society groups and trade unions also have seats.

On Saturday, the council elected Colonel Malick Diaw as its president unopposed, according to AFP journalists, with 111 votes in his favour and seven abstentions. Three council members did not vote.

Diaw was second in command of the military junta that took power after Keita’s ouster. The junta has never formally been dissolved.

Last month, Goita was also given veto power over the appointments to the new legislature, in a move seen by critics of the interim regime as strengthening army control.

The opposition June 5 Movement, which led protests against Keita this year, said in a statement on Friday that it was boycotting the new legislature and that it would not serve as a “stooge for a disguised military regime”.

Source: AFP

5, December 2020

Ambazonia Interim Gov’t confirms four-day lockdown ⁰

Southern Cameroons Vice President Dabney Yerima has confirmed a four-day lockdown of Ambazonia territory that started on Friday against the staging of French Cameroun so-called pioneer regional elections scheduled for today Sunday December 5.

The lockdown will run from Friday to Monday, according to a statement issued by the Southern Cameroons Interim Government on social media.

We understand the streets have been deserted and all sorts of activities are not operational. Ambazonia Restoration Forces have also issued death threats to residents if they participate in the Biya Francophone election.

On Wednesday, the Francophone dominated army told observer missions and media organizations that it has taken necessary security measures to ensure the elections unfold without hitches in Southern Cameroons.

The ruling CPDM party hopes today’s regional elections will help appease Southern Cameroonians by accelerating decentralization.

Southern Cameroons Self Defense Groups have been clashing with Cameroon government forces since 2017 in a bid to defend their homeland now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda