Coronavirus: Testing centres ready in Kano, Kaduna, Jos, Maiduguri this week - NCDC
- The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has said there will be four new laboratories for testing COVID-19
- The new testing centres will be located in Kano, Kaduna, Jos and Maiduguri
- The need to have more laboratories became important following the rise in the number of confirmed cases in Nigeria to 238 on Monday, April 6
Following the rise in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said by the end of this week, there will be four new molecular diagnostic laboratories for testing the COVID-19.
According to Daily Trust, Chikwe Ihekweazu, the NCDC director-general, while disclosing this on Monday, April 6, at the sixth joint national briefing of the Presidential Taskforce Force (PTF) on COVID-19 said the centres will be in Kano, Kaduna, Jos and Maiduguri
He said: “We are working to activate two labs in Kano and Kaduna at the same time from tomorrow (Tuesday), and two labs in Jos and Maiduguri from Thursday.
By the end of this week, we will have four new laboratories in Kano, Kaduna, Jos and Maiduguri fully active. We are solely assessing every state in the country, but we are starting with states that we already know have a baseline capacity to build on."
The NCDC boss went on to note that 30% of all the COVID-19 cases had been found through contact tracing and the centres are using an electronic platform to track all the cases.
These new laboratories will be an addition to nine molecular diagnostic laboratories to test for COVID-19 located in Abuja, Lagos, Edo, Osun, Oyo, and Ebonyi states.
Legit.ng previously reported that the NCDC said it will expand its testing capacity for COVID-19 from six laboratories to 13. The agency through its verified Twitter account on Sunday, March 29, noted that the new laboratories would be in Abakaliki, Maiduguri, Kano, Sokoto, Port-Harcourt, Jos and Kaduna.
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With increasing cases of COVID-19 in the country, the need for additional facilities to conduct the test has become necessary to avoid losing probable cases to the community.
Similarly, the NCDC revealed that there are presently only five laboratories within its laboratory network with the capacity to test for coronavirus in Nigeria.
This was confirmed in a tweet shared on the agency's official Twitter handle on Sunday, March 22. NCDC went on to note that laboratory teams are working around the clock to ensure rapid testing of samples from suspected cases across the country.
This comes as the organization is concerned about the potential outbreak of coronavirus in Africa due to the poor health facilities available on the continent.
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Source: Legit.ng