The Lockdown Will Be Indefinite From April 20 To Protect Our People – Abia

Abia state government has come out to announce an indefinite extension of the ongoing lockdown in the state, which will start from April 20, as part of its effort to prevent coronavirus outbreak in the state.

This was revealed in a recent statement signed by Chief John Okiyi-Kalu, the Commissioner for Information, and made available to Newsmen in Umuahia.

According to him, the government will relax the current lockdown directive on April 18 and 19 so that residents will be able to buy food items and other essential supplies before the lockdown becomes active.

He added that the decision to extend the lockdown is imperative to curb the spread of the deadly virus in the country.

His words, “The advice of medical experts and a painstaking review of the coronavirus situation with the state COVID-19 Inter-Ministerial Committee.”

“And in our continued determination to protect the people of the state from the pandemic while also ensuring that the effect of preventive measures on our people is alleviated.”

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Coronaviruses are a group of related viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections that can be mild, such as some cases of the common cold (among other possible causes, predominantly rhinoviruses), and others that can be lethal, such as SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. Symptoms in other species vary: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea. There are yet to be vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections.

Coronaviruses constitute the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, order Nidovirales, and realm Riboviria. They are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome and a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry. The genome size of coronaviruses ranges from approximately 27 to 34 kilobases, the largest among known RNA viruses. The name coronavirus is derived from the Latin corona, meaning “crown” or “halo”, which refers to the characteristic appearance reminiscent of a crown or a solar corona around the virions (virus particles) when viewed under two-dimensional transmission electron microscopy, due to the surface covering in club-shaped protein spikes.

Human coronaviruses were first discovered in the late 1960s. The earliest ones discovered were an infectious bronchitis virus in chickens and two in human patients with the common cold (later named human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43). Other members of this family have since been identified, including SARS-CoV in 2003, HCoV NL63 in 2004, HKU1 in 2005, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 (formerly known as 2019-nCoV) in 2019. Most of these have involved serious respiratory tract infections.