Coronavirus Has Not Affected The Environment Negatively – MKO Balogun

Group Chief Executive Officer of Global Property & Facilities International Ltd, Dr. MKO Balogun has come out to say that the coronavirus pandemic has positively impacted the environment.

He revealed this recently as the International Facility Management Association IFMAN celebrated the Day with the theme “Celebrating Our Environment” by virtual meeting.

According to him, Facility Management has successfully integrated people, place, and process within the built environment with the purpose of improving the quality of life of people and the productivity of the core business.

He added that facility engineers, janitors, security team, IT teams in residential buildings, hospitals, government offices, and public offices should be celebrated for their sacrificial roles that they have played since the outbreak of the dreaded disease.

His words, “Facility Management has successfully integrated people, place and process within the built environment with the purpose of improving the quality of life of people and the productivity of the core business”.

“Facility managers, facility engineers, janitors, security team, IT teams in residential buildings, hospitals, government offices, and public offices should be celebrated for their sacrificial roles that they have played since the outbreak of the dreaded disease.”

President of IFMAN Nigeria, Mrs. Abimbola Olusegun-Adamolekun added, “This special day enables us to reflect on our achievements of the profession. It is expected that the 2020 edition of the celebration will enable professionals to coordinate the workplace, people and technology especially at this time of COVID-19 pandemic so that our facilities can remain open and free of viruses.”

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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.