Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) can now carry out COVID-19 tests on at least 3000 persons daily across its centres, the Director-General of NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu has said.
He disclosed that at the moment, there are 12 active testing laboratories in Nigeria.
He said that the target is to test 2000 samples in Lagos, 1000 in Abuja and the rest of the country daily, of the right people who meet the case definition.
Ihekweazu spoke during the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja on Wednesday.
“We’re expanding our labs, we have provided states with sample collection kits and developing innovative methods to ensure testing.
“Ending of today, we are going to publish a testing and diagnostic strategy for the country so that everybody is aware of where we are and where we are going short and long term.
“That is, how we are going to introduce the TB facilities (GeneXpert Machines), HIV testing, and how we are going to end up with one lab per state”, he said.
On his part, the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, explained that the Ministry has expanded the testing criteria to include cases with fever and respiratory tract symptoms.
To ensure maximum utilisation of our increased testing capacity, the minister said that the case definition and testing criteria have been expanded to include not only contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases with fever and respiratory tract symptoms but also all persons with fever and respiratory tract symptoms of unknown cause.
“The advent of community transmission marks the evolution of our initial strictly containment strategy.
“Risk communication to the public and coordination with the state level COVID-19 response preparedness groups, are going to be scaled up.
“There is also an increased drive to detect cases more rapidly, especially in hotspot communities,” the minister said.
He added that a guideline has been produced by the FMoH accreditation committee to ensure that standards are maintained at all COVID-19 isolation and treatment centres across the country.
