NCDC DG says testing is Nigeria’s weakest point in response to COVID-19 

The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, on Wednesday admitted that testing has remained the weakest point in the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ihekweazu made the admission while speaking during an interview on a TV programme, adding that his agency was working aggressively to increase testing across the country, especially in line with its ambitious target to test 2 million people in 3 months.

He said: “We are working very aggressively to increase the testing in Nigeria. This is one of the weakest part of our response because we started from a very low base initially but we have worked extremely hard to move from 5 to 35 laboratories right now with their ability to test for COVID-19.

“We have carried out the highest number of test over the last few days and we will keep increasing this progressively across the country.

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“Testing is such an important entry point in the response because of the number of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic infections that we have. We have to really ramp up our testing because it is an eye into the outbreak. We can’t manage something we can’t measure sufficiently.

“We also have our eyes on the future because we never want to be in a situation that we are right now. The Africa Centre for Disease Control has been a great support for this.

“We set a very ambitious target for ourselves about a month ago, to test two million people in 3 months. We are not yet meeting that target but we are well on our way to do so as we introduce new testing opportunities using the genexpert platform, the Abbot platform that we use for HIV into the testing apparatus in Nigeria.”

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