Mr. Boss Mustapha, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) has urged Nigerians to embrace the lockdown imposed by governments at all levels to prevent the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.

Boss, who is also the Chairman, Presidential Taskforce (PTF) on COVID-19, revealed this as he answered questions after some women protested the lockdown in Delta state.

According to him, now is not the time to resist the lockdown because it is in everyone’s interest for Nigerians to remain indoors.

He added that Nigerians should start to see the benefits in the lockdown and avoid all kinds of recklessness that will lead to unnecessary death.

His words, “Delta state has power over its territory and the Governor saw the need to impose a lockdown to curb the virus,”

”I urge Nigerians to see the benefits in the lockdown and I believe this appeal should be received with the best of intention.

“And as the president earlier said, we should not allow the recklessness of few to cause the death of all.”

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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.