The Increasing Trend Of Coronavirus Cases In Africa Is Worrying – WHO

The coronavirus pandemic is far from over, the World Health Organization, WHO has said.

The health organization revealed this at a recent press conference in Geneva, Switzerland amid relaxing of lockdowns all across the globe.

According to WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, nations should keep doing all they can to find, isolate, test, and treat all cases and traces amid the pandemic.

He added that WHO is very concerned with the increasing trends of coronavirus cases in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and some Asian countries.

His words, “We continue to urge countries to find, isolate, test and treat all cases and trace every contact to ensure these declining trends continue. But the pandemic is far from over. WHO continues to be concerned about the increasing trends in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and some Asian countries.”

“If we are not united, the virus will exploit the cracks between us and continue to create havoc. Lives will be lost and even every single life is very precious. We can only defeat this virus through unity at the national level and through solidarity, genuine solidarity at the global level.”

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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.