Cheap Coronavirus Vaccine Might Not Reach Nigeria Till 2022 – Oluwatomi Owopetu

A Consultant Public Health Physician, Dr Oluwatomi Owopetu has come out to say that an affordable coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine might not be available in Nigeria till 2022.

She revealed this during an online conference hosted by the Centre for Palliative Care, Nigeria.

According to her, despite the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) optimism of a COVID-19 vaccine before the end of the year, palliative care is of more importance for the time being.

She added that ensuring we aid a coronavirus patient’s quality of life and physical pain management is very important till a permanent solution arrives.

Her words, “Palliative and Hospice Care go beyond providing care and comfort to the dying or those terminally ill.

“It also helps to improve a patient’s quality of life and physical pain management.

“Palliative care during this pandemic should not be undermined, its importance may not be immediately evident as health systems grapple with providing curative care while coping with ever increasing influx of patients.

“Palliative care is of utmost importance for delivering humane, effective care that is aligned with patients’ expectations, including COVID-19 patients, as we seek to improve care and comfort for the numerous patients who require the service.”

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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.