The end to the spread of coronavirus may be in sight as some scientists in Isreal have announced a significant breakthrough in the development of COVID-19 vaccine in their four-year-old research.
According to a statement published by the Migal Galilee Research Institute (MIGAL) on its website on Thursday, February 27, some of its researchers said they had developed an effective vaccine against avian coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus (IBV).
The researchers said they will soon create a human vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19), the viral disease that is spreading across the world like a raging wildfire with death tolls increasing at an exponential rate.
We learnt that IBV is a disease affecting animals and the vaccine they developed against it has been proven in pre-clinical trials.
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The research which spanned four years was funded by Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture, MIGAL. According to the researchers, the vaccine against the animal disease which they have just created will lead to the rapid creation of a vaccine against coronavirus which is affecting humans.
The researchers said they have now made required genetic adjustments to adapt the vaccine to COVID-19, that is, the coronavirus affecting humans.
They are currently working to achieve the safety approvals that will enable in-vivo testing, enable the initiation of production of a vaccine to counter the coronavirus epidemic.
The researchers discovered that the poultry coronavirus has high genetic similarity to the human COVID-19 and that it uses the same infection mechanism. This, according to the researchers, increases the likelihood of achieving an effective human vaccine in a very short period of time.
David Zigdon who is MIGAL’s chief executive officer said: “Given the urgent global need for a human coronavirus vaccine, we are doing everything we can to accelerate development. Our goal is to produce the vaccine during the next 8-10 weeks, and to achieve safety approval in 90 days. He said the vaccine will be in an oral form which will make it more accessible to the public.
Chen Katz, MIGAL’s biotechnology group leader, also said “the scientific framework for the vaccine is based on a new protein expression vector, which forms and secretes a chimeric soluble protein that delivers the viral antigen into mucosal tissues by self-activated endocytosis (a cellular process in which substances are brought into a cell by surrounding the material with cell membrane, forming a vesicle containing the ingested material), causing the body to form antibodies against the virus.
In pre-clinical (IN-VIVO) trials, MIGAL’s researchers have demonstrated that the oral vaccination induces high levels of specific anti-IBV antibodies.”
Earlier, we reported that the federal ministry of health has confirmed the first case of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) case in Nigeria.
The case, which was confirmed on Thursday, February 27 is the first to be reported in the country since the beginning of the outbreak the viral disease in China in January. The case is an Italian citizen who works in Nigeria and returned from Milan, Italy to Lagos, Nigeria on Tuesday, February 25.
As one of its measures to curb the spread of coronavirus in Lagos, the state government has kicked off an identification process so as to ascertain all who had contact with the infected Italian man.
According to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in a press briefing, those who will be discovered as contacts of the man in the state will be immediately quarantined. Confirming this, the state’s commissioner for health, Akin Abayomi, said that the process started in the afternoon of Friday, February 28.
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Meanwhile, Nigeria’s former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has advised the federal government on to tackle coronavirus as Nigeria confirmed the first case of the deadly disease.
In a statement posted on his official Facebook page on Friday, February 28, Atiku gave four major pieces of advice of how the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration can effectively tackle the disease.
First, Atiku advised the Nigerian government to tackle the disease putting up a united front. He advised that the country must be united if it wants to defeat the virus.
Also, the Nigerian Senate has warned that the country is not adequately prepared to contain the spread of coronavirus. The lawmakers rejected the preventive measures put in place by the Federal Ministry of Health and other relevant agencies were not enough.
The Senate, therefore, charged the committee on health to put pressure on the health ministry and other related agencies to ensure that the right thing is done.
Sadly, an Italian-Nigerian professional footballer named King Paul Akpan Udoh has reportedly emerged as the first footballer to be diagnosed with the deadly coronavirus.
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The entire world has been thrown into a serious panic since the outbreak of the deadly disease which emanated from China in which hundreds are currently battling for survival.
Until he was said to have been confirmed a carrier of the disease, King Paul Akpan was playing in the Italian third division side with Pianese. King Paul Udoh, 22, was reported to have been diagnosed with deadly coronavirus on Thursday, February 27, and he has been quarantined according to various reports.
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