Professor of virology and former Vice-Chancellor of the Redeemer’s University Nigeria, Oyewale Tomori, has said anyone who claims to have found cure for the coronavirus in Africa is lying.
He said only the Chinese could make such claims because they had been exposed to the virus longer than anyone else.
Tomori spoke on the sidelines of his reaction to the profiling of the genome sequence of coronavirus by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
Speaking to our Correspondent on the likely cure for the global pandemic disease, Tomori said it was still too early to speak about a drug that could effectively cure coronavirus.
“Nobody has done drug trials yet, but they are trying it now, no doubt. They are doing it experimentally in many places and you should know there are different coronaviruses. They come from animals – goats, sheep.
“If anybody is saying, especially in West Africa, that he has found a cure for coronavirus, I think he is just deceiving us.
“The drug has to be tested. We can only check the drug against the patient. You cannot claim a cure for something you have not tested.
“If the Chinese are saying it now, you can say yes, because they have had it for a long time and have tried different drugs on patients.
It may be recalled that a former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission and professor of pharmacognosy, Maurice Iwu, said he and his team might have found a cure for coronavirus.
At an audience with the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr.Ogbonnanya Onu and a handful of other ministers in Abuja recently, Iwu had disclosed that he and his team had been working on the research since 2015, and that the United States and the United Nations had showed interest.
Coronavirus has infected more than 100,000 people across 91 countries globally, according to an AFP tally on Friday.
The death toll reached 3,407, while the total number of infections hit 100,002, after a surge in cases worldwide since Thursday evening, notably in virus hotspot Iran, which clocked 1,234 new cases.