The Federal Government has urged schools to put in place preventive measures against COVID-19 before the government announces re-opening dates.

The Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu Adamu, revealed this at the 2020 Policy Meeting on Admissions to Tertiary Institutions on Tuesday in Abuja.

According to him, it is better for all heads of schools in Nigeria to not wait until a formal order to reopen schools is made before putting necessary measures in place to safeguard the health of the kids.

He added that every premise of each institution must be decontaminated and all efforts must be geared toward maintenance of the highest level of hygiene.

His words, “All institutions of learning must have hand washing facilities, body temperature checks, body disinfectants at all entering points to their major facilities including the gates, hostels, classes and offices.

“The whole premises of each institution must be decontaminated and all efforts must be geared toward maintenance of the highest level of hygiene.

“Ensure social and physical distancing in class sizes and eating spaces.”

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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.