Nigerian Government has revealed reason for the spike in the cases of coronavirus across the country.
It attributed it to the ongoing community transmission of the virus.
Dr. Osagie Ehanire, the Minister of Health, made this known during the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja on Wednesday.
The Minister said that the renewed efforts by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to do more aggressive testing is also responsible for the increased cases recorded.
According to him, “Concerning the increased number of cases, there is the notion that community transmission is going on very strongly and therefore, increasing the cases of those infected with COVID-19 and giving you something to find.
“It is also due to the improvement in testing and case finding. There is a renewed effort to do more aggressive testing by the NCDC – house-to-house testing and following any clusters that are of interest to increase the testing and to get more cases.
“We are going to order for over 100,000 cartridges of the GeneXpert machine through the Global Fund facility that we have through the Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM).
“Also, if we are able to get the biosafety cabinets for 26 of them ready, we can boost the number of activated GeneXpert machines in the country.
“The GeneXpert machines have four modules which allow you to test four samples at a time and the good thing about them is that they give you your results in a much faster time – within 45 minutes to 1 hour. So you can wait to get your results with the GeneXpert machine much faster.”
The GeneXpert machine is part of the high throughput testing platforms proposed by NCDC to increase testing, as there are 400 GeneXpert machines across the country.