The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says it planned to test two million Nigerians in three months as part of plans to identify more carriers of the deadly COVID-19 in Nigeria.
Since the outbreak of the virus in February, NCDC has only tested 10918 people out of which1532 results returned positive as at Monday, 28th of April, 2019.
The Director-General of NCDC, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu at the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 media briefing has however promised that the centre is targeting two million people in the next three months.
To achieve this, Ihekweazu said at least 50,000 samples must be tested in each of the 36 states and the FCT within the set period.
He added that while huge financial support would be needed to carry out the targeted number of test, the NCDC is engaging the State Governments on how best to work together with PTF to increase the capacity to test more people.
“In order to test two million people in three months, we need to test 50,000 samples per state, depending on population size….and it costs between $18 and $20 to test a COVID-19 sample. This is for reagent alone. We have not put a cost to human resources and other costs.” he said.
While responding to question why the country has not adopted cheaper testing method being developed in Dakar, Senegal, Ihekweazu said that the West African country had always enjoyed the presence of the World Health Organisation and a reference laboratory run by the WHO.
It said the new testing method would only be available by the middle of the year. He, however, said that it would not come as cheap as being said in the media.
“There is a long-standing World Health Organisation laboratory in Dakar, Senegal that has been a reference centre for a long time. There is a new testing development that will become available sometime in June or July. It is not available now. All the tests they have done so far (in Senegal) were done using PCR (polymerase chain reaction). There is no way that it (the new testing method) will be available at that price ($1).”
