The Delta State government has come out to announce that schools in the state would resume academic session on Jan. 18.

Mr Patrick Ukah, Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education recently revealed this via a statement issued in Asaba.

According to him, everyone involved must know that no student or teacher would be allowed into any school without a facemask to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

He added that all schools should see it as a duty to observe all the COVID-19 safety protocols as stipulated in the guidelines.

“All schools are once again directed to observe all the COVID-19 safety protocols as stipulated in the guidelines.

“No child or teacher is to be allowed into the school compound without a facemask to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“School infirmaries are requested to rise to their responsibilities of ensuring regular temperature checks on all entrants into school compounds.”

“There will be resumption tests on Wednesday, Jan. 20. The tests will be part of the students’ continuous assessment.”

“Parents and guardians are urged to strictly adhere to the new dates and prepare their children for resumption.”

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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.