The Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, (LASUTH) has come out to urge Nigerians to accept the seriousness of the second wave of coronavirus (COVID-19).

Prof. Adetokunbo Fabamwo, Chief Medical Director (CMD) LASUTH, recently revealed this in a statement issued in Lagos.

According to LASUTH, the citizens have to play their roles in saving lives amid the pandemic by complying with safety measures.

He added that the public response to the pandemic has not been encouraging, and the increase in the daily infection numbers is proof that Nigeria has started experiencing the second wave of COVID-19.

His words, “There has been a rapid and steady rise in the number of positive cases reported daily, as well as a rise in positivity rate.

“The positivity rate rose from an average of about eight per cent in November 2020 and currently stands at an average of 28 per cent.

“The disease is affecting both the young and the elderly and some affected people may experience long-term sequel of the disease.

“People are dying from this disease and it is imperative that we accept the seriousness of this situation and play our parts in combating this scourge.”

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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.