The Chinese Coronavirus Doctors Are Not Missing, They Are Working – Embassy

The Chinese doctors and medics who came into Nigeria in April to help curb the spread of coronavirus are actively working with relevant authorities and agencies to save lives, and are not missing, The Chinese Embassy in Abuja has said.

The embassy recently revealed that the 14 medical experts are currently at their duty posts to do the jobs they were brought to the country for.

According to the spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, Mr. Sun Saixiong, even if the embassy is not directly involved in the operations and activities of the medics, it is fully aware of their several contributions towards curbing the spread of the virus in the country.

He added that the medics also completed their quarantine period in a cooperative and respectful manner strictly prescribed by the Nigerian Health authorities.

His words, “The Embassy of China is not directly involved in what the medics do on a daily basis but we have always been supportive of our companies to fulfil their social responsibilities in Nigeria and we do appreciate their collaboration with their Nigerian brothers and sisters,”

“We are aware also that the medics have completed their quarantine period in a cooperative and respectful manner strictly prescribed by the Nigerian Health authorities and manner to help contain the pandemic in the country.

“We are also aware that the Nigerian Ministry of Health has organised a video conference call and both sides have exchanged their COVID-19 fighting experiences, the result of which we believe should be mutually beneficial.”

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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.