The Federal Government has activated 22 molecular diagnostic laboratories for testing coronavirus across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
This is in line with the Presidential mandate to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to engage in aggressive contact tracing and testing.
It has also set an ambitious target of testing 2 million in another three months.
As at the time of this report, the NCDC has tested 22,492 persons for COVID-19.
The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, who made these known in Abuja during the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
He said that although there are 21 laboratories in the country, the number will increase to 22 with Port Harcourt testing laboratory joining the list.
According to him: “We are managing a network of 22 laboratories nationwide now for COVID-19 testing, they are 21 but by the end of today it will be 22 when we add Port Harcourt.
“We have 36 plus one states, therefore, when results are generated from the labs they are first sent to the state epidemiologist.
“It is the responsibility of the state epidemiologist to then provide those results to every individual and then arrange for them to come in.
“When we discovered that it was difficult to generate physical results for everyone, we decided that in order to make the system work faster, we are going to give verbal results to everyone with negative results.
“If you are positive, we will give you physical results. Anyone that then wants a physical result for any purpose we will then send that person the physical results.
“The data shared is on people tested not on the total tests done. From the data we share every day, I think we have about 22,000 people tested.
“We don’t include all the series of tests. Remember that every individual that tests positive has to be retested every 3 to 5 days.”
The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, added: “The laboratories in Kano were directed to work in shifts to reduce the turnaround time for testing and enable faster return of results.”
