COVID-19: Nigeria’s testing capacity now 50,000 — FG

Anthony Iwuoma

The  Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, has said Nigeria now has the capacity to test about 50,000 for Covid-19.

However, the Presidential Task Force, PTF, on COVID-19,  warned state governments against competing with figures, saying having a higher number of positive cases was was nothing to be ashamed of.

It warned Kogi, Nasarawa, Cross River and Yobe states where no  case has been  no so far, not to hide from relevant officials who meet the case definition to be screened and their samples extracted for testing.

Government also announced that it has reopened its molecular laboratory in Kano State, which was earlier shut for decontamination after some staff got infected with the virus.

Speaking during the daily briefing of the PTF in Abuja, yesterday, the the Director General of NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Iheakwazu, said:  “On the Roche equipment, what we have at the moment in the country as we speak, is a capacity to test about 50,000.

‘’This is with the conventional RT-PCR and the new Roche equipment that we have launched today (yesterday). So, with every new laboratory that we have, we just set up a laboratory in Sokoto, it means we have to provide them with the logistics and everything they need to collect samples and we are looking to do this in 36 plus one states.

‘’The good thing about the new Roche equipment  we are starting to work with today is that it eliminates the need for certain things like the extraction kits. So, we can actually do a lot more work in a short time.

‘’If we had all the samples in the laboratories, if all the collections happen from the states, we can do up to 900 or a thousand tests in a day. Really, there is a lot of capacity to test now, the challenge is to bring in the samples quickly and get the equipment working.”

He also revealed that labs in Kano have been reopened.

“Within the first 12 hours of the first confirmed case, we had already deployed a national response team to Kano to support the state government’s efforts. We now have a total of 15 people in Kano and we will continue scaling the number of people supporting Kano State until we get to the appropriate number.

“Just 10 days ago, I announced the activation of the molecular laboratory at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital but unfortunately, we had an incident where the laboratory was contaminated and biosafety measures had to be strengthened.

‘’So, in the interest of all the healthcare workers in Kano, especially in the teaching hospital, we had to pause and shut down that laboratory for a few days and that was exactly what we did. We have been working together with our colleagues to reactivate this laboratory but we have to do it safely.

‘’In the last 72 hours, we sent another team from the National Reference Laboratory of the NCDC and they have worked day and night over the weekend to reactivate that laboratory and I am happy to announce that the laboratory will start working this (Monday) afternoon (yesterday) and start testing samples again as they should be. This has not been easy, by any stretch of imagination.’’

Ihekweazu urged states to collect more samples from people who meet the case definition for testing and warned against playing with figures.

“There are only four states at the moment that have not reported a case in Nigeria: Cross River, Kogi, Nasarawa and Yobe. We are looking at the number of samples collected from these states.

‘’We are not satisfied with the number of samples collected. We need to test more, but to test more, we need to collect more and that collection part is the responsibility of states and their public health teams.

‘’We want to really encourage every state in Nigeria, you cannot hide this. Eventually, it will emerge. It is better we understand what is happening early than leave it till we start hearing stories of death.”

 Boss Mustapha, Chairman of the Presidential Taskforce PTF on Covid-19, who is also Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, said  “The PTF shall continue to pursue the strategy of aggressive testing, detection, isolation, contact tracing, care and management. Similarly, non-pharmaceutical measures will be enhanced.
“Over the last four weeks, we made appreciable progress but we are not yet out of the woods because a lot more is required to be done. Nigerians at all levels must take responsibility for our actions, adopt behavioural modification, ensure compliance with advisories and provide guidance to our followers and youths.”