President of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, Prof. Innocent Ujah has come out to say that he seriously warned against the reopening of schools months ago.

He, however, revealed that when that happened, he was tagged as someone who is against the progress of the nation’s education sector.

According to him, Nigeria was not adequately prepared when the schools were reopened, and there are some of the things that could have been prevented if sufficient precautions were taken before reopening the schools.

He added that it is sad that social distancing protocols are not being observed in market places amid the pandemic.

His words, “When the government wanted to reopen the schools, I cautioned them and said if the schools must be reopened there must be necessary preparation to prevent the children from contracting the virus.”

”One parent wrote the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 that I don’t want people to go to school and that I was being wicked. Now, we all know better; a lot of children who sat for the last WASSCE were infected.”

”These are some of the things that could have been prevented if sufficient precautions were taken before reopening the schools.”

”Recall that during the campaign for the governorship elections in Edo and Ondo States, everyone was falling over each other. If you go to the market places, social distancing protocol is not being observed. In that case, are we prepared?”

What do you think?

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.