Coronavirus Is Not A Money Making Avenue For The Government – NMA

The Kwara branch of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) has come out to say that 35 doctors have so far tested positive for COVID-19 since the virus found its way to the state.

Dr. Kolade Solagberu, NMA Chairman revealed this today while briefing newsmen in Ilorin on events heralding the association’s 2020 Annual General Meeting (AGM).

According to him, the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) is yet to record any casualty among its members, but residents of the state should stop acting like the pandemic is not real.

He added that the outbreak is no money-making avenue for the government and Nigerians must start taking it seriously.

His words, ”Residents should help the doctors to help them by not paying unnecessary visits or consultations to hospitals.

”For now, people should avoid visiting the hospital except for life threatening issues.

”We advise people to engage in e-health service instead of physical consultation to avoid contact as much as possible.

”People should stop unnecessary visit to patients in the hospital. Those who follow a patient waiting to be attended to, are not encouraged for now.

”You should just help us to help you because the less the number of patient we attend to, the less the chances of spreading the virus.

”This is because every patient is a potential COVID-19 case.”

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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.