Chief Medical Director, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, AKTH in Kano State, Professor Abdurrahman Abba Sheshe has come out to say that it is not ethical for health workers to abscond when coronavirus patients show up for treatment.

He revealed this when he received a delegation of members of the Joint Unions of Health Associations in Nigeria, JOHESU led by its National President, Comrade Biobolomoye Joy Josiah.

According to him, the same way it is the responsibility of the military to fight and conquer enemies at the war front, it is also the responsibility of the health workers to fight and defeat the pandemic no matter what.

He then hailed the resilient health workers in the country for their dedication and commitment to ending the pandemic in our nation thus far.

His words, “We are in Kano on solidarity with our members in Kano state to show concern to the people of kano especially that COVID 19 has come powerfully in the state, we need to show them that we are with them and boost the morale of our staff that was stretch beyond the limit.

“We advised health workers to keep safe and ensure that they have their personal protective equipment aimed at ensuring that they are safe.”

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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.

The name “coronavirus” is derived from Latin corona, meaning “crown” or “wreath”, itself a borrowing from Greek κορώνη korṓnē, “garland, wreath”. The name refers to the characteristic appearance of virions (the infective form of the virus) by electron microscopy, which have a fringe of large, bulbous surface projections creating an image reminiscent of a crown or of a solar corona. This morphology is created by the viral spike peplomers, which are proteins on the surface of the virus.