Residents Must Support The Government’s Fight Against Coronavirus In Edo – Obaseki

Edo State Governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki has built capacity to conduct 600 coronaviruses (COVID-19) tests on a daily basis.

The governor recently disclosed while addressing journalists in Benin weekend.

According to him, he can only urge stakeholders and residents to support the government’s efforts to contain the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic

He added that there are 3 more Real Time-PCR Molecular Reference Laboratory operational in the state, and they will all help in the battle against coronavirus.

His words, “In our COVID-19 response, we provided funding and platform for the set up of three additional Real Time-PCR Molecular Reference Laboratory in Edo State, with a daily testing capacity of 600 test per day at the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, (ISTH), University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), Edo Specialist Hospital and Lily Hospital.”

“There is also a massive procurement of laboratory commodities, personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, dialysis machines, PCR reagents, vehicles etc. essential for supporting Covid-19 response in Edo State”.

“The state government has also put in place a highly coordinated surveillance system across the 18 LGAs of the state as well as along entry and exit points into the state for contact tracing, line listing and active case search at facilities and communities.”

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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.