Tina Amanda
A Public Health Physician in Rivers state has urged people to focus more on the COVID-19 preventive measures rather than consuming Vitamin C as it does not help to fight against CoronaVirus but only helps to build the immune system.
Dr Vetty Agala, who is also the State President of Medical Women Association of Nigeria, stated this to our correspondent Tina Amanda, following the high demand of fruits rich in Vitamin C by residents of the state.
According to her, building immune system will only help to fight illnesses generally, such as bacteria, viral diseases, adding that medically Vitamin C has not been proven to be a cure or prevention for COVID-19, as vaccine and treatment of COVID-19 is yet to be discovered.
“Vitamin C does not help to fight Coronavirus. Vitamin C is good but it does not prevent or cure the virus. When you are taking Vitamin C to prevent COVID-19, that is absolutely wrong because we have people who are asymptomatic that can still transmit the virus, so people should not go drinking Vitamin C, searching for lemon, oranges making the cost of things go haywire. COVID-19 is still something that is revolving, every day we are still getting to understand this virus.
“The virus is contracted if someone has an exposed contact with a person who is already infected with the virus and droplets gets to that person, that means such an individual will equally contract the COVID 19.
“People should learn to play by the rule. If they say stay at home, please stay home. If you do not have a need to go out, wash your hands, do not touch your face, sneeze into a disposable tissue, give the required distance, reduce cold things, keep warm because the virus is said to be sensitive to temperature”
She advised the public to stop panic buying and making things unnecessarily expensive, stressing that panic buying could actually cause the death of people rather than the virus.
“Let us reduce fear, people are panicking, they are doing panic buying and panic selling, that is what will kill people faster than the virus itself, because if the oranges that we buy for fifty naira is now being sold for one hundred and fifty naira, how would people cope to buy it at that amount”
