Aim: To study the antibacterial effect of Chromolaena odorata extracts on multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae from wounds. Place of Study: University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria, between January and June 2019. Methodology: A total of 87 wound swabs were collected from patients of University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital, Akure. Air-dried and powdered C. odorata leaves were extracted using hot water, ethanol and methanol as extraction solvents and concentrated using a rotary evaporator. The concentrated C. odorata extracts were purified using chromatographic techniques. Qualitative and quantitative phytochemical screening of C. odorata extracts were done by standard methods. Antibiotics susceptibility pattern of bacterial isolates to a panel of ten (10) conventional antibiotics was determined by disc diffusion method. Results: C. odorata methanolic extract had the highest extract yield (26.2%). From the multidrug resistance analysis, 66.7% of bacterial isolates tested had multidrug resistance index (MDRI) of 100%. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was susceptible to 100 mg/ml of C. odorata ethanolic extract but resistant (0.00±0.00) to 100 mg/ml of hot aqueous C. odorata extract. Conclusion: This study reveals the inhibitory activities of C. odorata extracts on multidrug resistant bacteria isolated from wounds and an indication of their potential in the treatment of wound infection.

The current global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been a tremendous public health challenge globally. While the respiratory transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has been established, evolving reports on the impact of the gastrointestinal system and the prolonged faecal shedding of SARS-CoV-2 show the likelihood of faecally mediated transmission. The increasing evidential presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and faecal material poses a significant public health threat which may potentiate global vulnerability to high risk of human exposure through environmental drivers especially in less developed countries. While extensively exploring the likelihood of faecally mediated SARS-CoV-2 transmission, infection control and prevention measures aimed at mitigating this pandemic should holistically include environmental drivers.

Background Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been surging globally. Risk strata in medical attention are of dynamic significance for apposite assessment and supply distribution. Presently, no known cultured contrivance is available to fill this gap of this pandemic. The aim of this study is to develop a predictive model based on vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) model of various orders for gender based daily COVID-19 incidence in Nigeria. This study also aims to proffer empirical evidence that compares incidence between male and female for COVID-19 risk factors. Methods Wilcoxon signed-rank test is employed to investigate the significance of the difference in the gender distributions of the daily incidence. A VARMA model of various orders is formulated for the gender based daily COVID-19 incidence in Nigeria. The optimal VARMA model is identified using Bayesian information criterion. Also, a predictive model based on univariate autoregressive moving average model is formulated for the daily death cases in Nigeria. Fold change is estimated based on crude case-fatality risk to investigate whether there is massive underreporting and under-testing of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria. Results Daily incidence is higher in males on most days from 11 April 2020 to 12 September 2020. Result of Wilcoxon signed-rank test shows that incidence among male is significantly higher than female (p-value < 2.22 × 10−16). White neural network test shows that daily female incidence is not linear in mean (p-value = 0.00058746) while daily male incidence is linear in mean (p-value = 0.4257). McLeod-Li test shows that there is autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity in the female incidence (Maximum p-value = 1.4277 × 10−5) and male incidence (Maximum p-value = 9.0816 × 10−14) at 5% level of significance. Ljung-Box test (Tsay, 2014) shows that the daily incidence cases are not random (p-value=0.0000). The optimal VARMA model for male and female daily incidence is VARMA (0,1). The optimal model for the Nigeria’s daily COVID-19 death cases is identified to be ARIMA (0,1,1). There is no evidence of massive underreporting and under-testing of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria. Conclusions Comparison of the observed incidence with fitted data by gender shows that the optimal VARMA and ARIMA models fit the data well. Findings highlight the significant roles of gender on daily COVID-19 incidence in Nigeria.

Background This study focused on the evaluation of the bioactive compounds of Vernonia amygdalina Del. leaf extracts and their antibacterial potential on some water-related bacterial isolates. The bacterial isolates were confirmed using standard microbiological test. The leaves of V. amygdalina were subjected to extraction using the Maceration method with water and ethanol as the extraction solvents. Gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy (GC–MS) was carried out on extracts. Antibacterial susceptibility test of V. amygdalina extracts on isolates was carried out. Results Aqueous extract of V. amygdalina had a higher percentage yield (11.89%) than the ethanol extract (5.37%). The GC–MS carried out revealed the presence of butanoic acid, squalene, palmitaldehyde, octadecanoic acid, Z-hexadecanoic acid ethyl ester, oxirane, tetradecyl, 3- methyl-2-phenylindole, n-heneicosane, phytol, methyl-2-O-benzyl-d-arabinofuranoside, cholest-5-en-3-ol acetate; with hexadecanoic acid ethyl ester and 1,1-diethoxy-3methylbutane having the highest percentage composition of 24.37% and 13.42% in aqueous and ethanol extract, respectively, aqueous extract highly inhibited Escherichia coli with an inhibition zone of 10.333 ± 0.882 and 36.667 ± 0.882 for 25 mg/ml and 100 mg/ml, respectively, while the ethanol extracts inhibited most of the isolates with an inhibition range of 7.000 ± 1.155 to 30.333 ± 0.882. The minimum inhibitory concentration for both extracts on the isolates varies from 25 to 50 mg/ml. Conclusions The ethanol extract of V. amygdalina had a higher inhibitory activity on the bacterial isolates than water. These findings indicate the potential of ethanol extract of V. amygdalina leaf in the treatment of water borne infections.

With the current outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), countries have been on rising preparedness to detect and isolate any imported and locally transmitted cases of the disease. It is observed that mode of transmission of the disease varies from one country to the other. Recent studies have shown that COVID-19 cases are not influenced by race and weather conditions. In this study, effect of modes of transmission of COVID-19 is considered with respect to prevalence and mortality counts in World Health Organisation (WHO) regions. Also, a negative binomial model is formulated for new death cases in all WHO regions as a function of confirmed cases, confirmed new cases, total deaths and modes of transmission, with the goal of identifying a model that predicts the total new death cases the best. Results from this study show that there is strong linear relationship among the COVID-19 confirmed cases, total new deaths and mode of transmission in all WHO regions. Findings highlight the significant roles of modes of transmission on total new death cases over WHO regions. Mode of transmission based on community transmission and clusters of cases significantly affects the number of new deaths in WHO regions. Vuong test shows that the formulated negative binomial model fits the data better than the null model.

Hemolysin is significantly toxic and it is used as a molecular marker for pathogenicity. This study evaluates the conditions for optimal hemolysin production by Alcaligenes faecalis strains isolated from a city abattoir wastewater. The parameters investigated for hemolysin formation were size of the inoculum, initial pH of production medium, bacterial incubation temperature, agitation speed and growth media. Thereafter, the effect by various parameter on the hemolytic activity for the formation of hemolysin were assessed. The genus Alcaligenes was assigned to the test organisms after analyzing their 16S rRNA gene sequence with accession numbers: MF498824, MF498825 and MF498827. Optimum conditions for hemolysin formation in Alcaligenes faecalis strain OS42 were inoculum size of 0.5% (v/v), pH 9, 20 oC, 0 rpm and brain heart infusion broth. Hemolytic activities, 77% and 79% were achieved at 20 h for strains OS42 and OS61, respectively. Cholesterol and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid did not affect hemolysin formation. This work revealed that the hemolysin formation in Alcaligenes strains was sourced from abattoir wastewater effluent and the effluent was contaminated with pathogenic Alcaligenes strains which is a public health hazard due to their prospective infection to human and animal.

The novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) recently gained attention as the virus continues to claim more lives globally. The disease hastily spread from Wuhan to further China provinces and other nations worldwide. Currently (as of August 10, 2020), more than 19.8 million cases have been confirmed with about 12.1 million recovered and 732,000 related deaths across the globe, as stated by the Johns Hopkins virus dashboard. At the beginning of the epidemic, elderly people were more susceptible to COVID-19 [1]. As the epidemic progressed, an increase in the number of cases among people between 45 and 64 years was recorded, as well as an upsurge in the number of cases among individuals, especially individuals between 18 and 44 years [2]. Reports also show that the cases are 2.6 times higher on Black/African American and 2.8 times higher on Hispanic/Latino individuals. Furthermore, COVID-19 induced death is nine times lower on 0-4 years old children and 630 times higher on 85+ years old adults [3]. The various signs associated with COVID-19 are fever, dry cough, short breath, and breathing difficulties. COVID-19 poses a severe threat to the health of individuals worldwide; on January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a universal health emergence on COVID-19 [4,5]. On January 21, 2020, the COVID-19 index case was confirmed in the USA. Roughly a month after that (February 29, 2020), the first death was reported in Washington state. As of August 10, 2020, the USA has confirmed about 4.9 million cases and over 161,284 related deaths. At least 229,073 of those cases occurred in New York City, 184,

Aims: This study evaluated the wastewater samples from Onyearugbulem abattoir water supply, 5 m from slaughter and washings, the incinerator, 10m downstream, 100 m downstream and 10 m upstream for bacteriological analysis. Methodology: Samples were collected according to standard methods for a period of 12 months between November 2014 and October 2015 according to standard methods. The total bacterial counts (TBC), total coliform counts (TCC), fecal coliform counts (FCC) and Escherichia coli counts were assayed using selective growth media while the presumptive identification was done using standard methods. Results: The aerobic total bacterial count (cfu/ml) of abattoir water supply and incinerator wastewater samples ranged from 5.3 x 10 3 ± 0.33 to 11.0 x 10 3 ± 0.82 and 20.56 x 10 3 ± 6.17 to 61.12 x 10 3 ± 7.00 respectively. The tentative bacterial isolates include Alcaligenes faecalis, Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli,