Nigeria Will Overcome COVID-19 – Ooni of Ife

The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi has come out to say that Nigeria will overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

He recently revealed this while he played host to Osun devotees in his palace as the ancient city celebrated the Osun festival.

According to him, even if the pandemic is still ravaging the country, Nigerians must keep observing laid down precautionary measures and avoid the circulation of fake news.

He added that Nigerians should stop creating problems while the government is trying to solve the one at hand.

His words, “Unlike the way we used to have it in Ife, we were forced to restrict this celebration which is a major festival in Ife.

“Our restriction made us to ensure that we don’t create more problems while trying to solve the one at hand.

“Osun festival as the world knows is the celebration of water and we all know that water is life.

“We’re using this instance to reconnect with our creator through nature to cleanse the world, and especially to end the pandemic.

“We are remembering our ancestors and it is unfair to call us idol worshipers.”

What do you think?

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.