Schools Can No Longer Resume On Jan. 4, New Resumption Date Is Jan. 18 – Ebonyi

The Ebonyi Government has come out to direct schools across the state to resume for the continuation of the first term of the 2020 /2021 academic session on Jan. 18.

The state recently revealed this in a statement by the State Commissioner for Education, Dr Onyebuchi Chima in Abakaliki.

According to him, the initial resumption date of Jan. 4 has been cancelled amid the 2nd wave of the coronavirus pandemic, so precautions are necessary.

He added that the postponement is also in compliance to the directives of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 pandemic.

His words, “I have been directed by Gov. Dave Umahi of Ebonyi, to inform the general public that resumption of academic activities in Ebonyi schools have been shifted to Monday, Jan. 18, as against the initial resumption date of Jan. 4.”

“The postponement is due to the need to take precautions against the impending second wave of COVID-19 and in compliance to the directives of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 pandemic.”

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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.