Background: Lassa fever is an acute viral haemorrhagic disease caused by the Lassa virus (LASV). It is endemic in West Africa and infects about 300,000 people each year, leading to approximately 5000 deaths annually. The development of the LASV vaccine has been listed as a priority by the World Health Organization since 2018. Considering the accelerated development and availability of vaccines against COVID-19, we set out to assess the prospects of LASV vaccines and the progress made so far. Materials and Methods: We reviewed the progress made on twenty-six vaccine candidates listed by Salami et al. (2019) and searched for new vaccine candidates through Google Scholar, PubMed, and DOAJ from June to July 2021. We searched the articles published in English using keywords that included “vaccine” AND “Lassa fever” OR “Lassa virus” in the title/abstract. Results: Thirty-four candidate vaccines were identified – 26 already listed in the review by Salami et al. and an additional 8, which were developed over the last seven years. 30 vaccines are still in the pre-clinical stage while 4 of them are currently undergoing clinical trials. The most promising candidates in 2019 were vesicular stomatitis virus-vectored vaccine and live-attenuated MV/LASV vaccine; both had progressed to clinical trials. Conclusions: Despite the focus on COVID-19 vaccines since 2020, LASV vaccine is under development and continues to make impressive progress, hence more emphasis should be put into exploring further clinical studies related to the most promising types of vaccines identified.

Objectives: COVID-19, primarily a respiratory disease, can have complications that affect all organ systems of the body. There is a paucity of systematic reviews on all the complications. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we set out to summarize the complications of COVID-19 in all body systems and their prevalence.Methods: PubMed and Google Scholar were searched for eligible articles using predefined criteria. Database searching and extraction were performed by independent reviewers. Results:We identified 74 case reports/series and 15 observational studies. In both the case reports/series and observational studies, pulmonary complications were the most commonly reported, particularly pneumonia, followed by neurological complications in case reports/case series and hematological complications in observational studies. Atrial arrhythmias (1.7%) and acute myopericarditis (1.7%), liver injury (3.3%), acute kidney injury (8.8%), deep venous thrombosis (2.2%), ischemic stroke (12.2%), herpes zoster (1.1%), and diabetic ketoacidosis (1.1%) were the most reported cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, renal, hematological, neurological, dermatological, and endocrine complications respectively in case reports/series. However, acute myocarditis (100%), hypoproteinemia (15.9-28.8%), transient acute renal failure (49.9-90.1%), acute coagulopathy (16.5-28.4%), and ischemic stroke (1.3-3.9%) had the highest pooled prevalence for cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, renal, hematological, and neurological complications respectively in observational studies. Conclusion:The complications of COVID-19 are multi-systemic with pulmonary complications being the most commonly reported. Notwithstanding, healthcare professionals should be aware that COVID-19 is a differential diagnosis for even the rare but equally debilitating complications and should screen patients who develop these complications to rule out COVID-19 during the pandemic and beyond.