The United Kingdom has come out to say that plans are underway for Nigeria to receive 16million free doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the first half of 2021.

This was recently revealed in a statement signed by the British High Commissioner, Catriona Laing, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, the coronavirus pandemic is global, therefore it needs a global solution for everyone to be free once and for all across the globe.

He added that the UK will keep being at the forefront of tackling COVID-19 internationally, and the country has so far pledged up to £1.3 billion of UK aid to ending the ourbreak.

His words, “This is a global pandemic that needs a global solution. The UK is at the forefront of tackling COVID-19 internationally and has so far pledged up to £1.3 billion of UK aid to end the coronavirus pandemic as quickly as possible, championing access to vaccines for all countries, particularly the world’s poorest. The UK is not doing this alone.”

“This is a collective effort, including working with international partners. In Nigeria, the UK is supporting an effective roll out of the vaccine through engagement and technical assistance to the Ministry of Health and relevant stakeholders.”

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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.