Nigeria’s capacity for rapid and increased testing for COVID-19 may receive a boost soon as the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has successfully validated the first phase of the viral Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) extraction which would enable local production of cheap testing kits for COVID-19.
The validation was carried out on Thursday in the laboratory of the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) in Abuja.
Speaking on the exercise, the Director-General of NABDA, Prof. Alex Akpa, noted that the success of the validation was important not only to Nigeria but Africa as a whole.
“The success of this validation shall enable us to massively produce test kits so that more people would be tested for COVID-19, not only in Nigeria but in Africa.
“The immediate aim is to produce reagents for real time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), and remember, recently the lack of reagents stalled work in Kano and molecular diagnosis could no longer take place.
“This project is, therefore, designed to enable not only Nigeria but the whole of Africa to put the issue of shortage of reagents behind”, Akpa said.
Speaking further, the DG revealed that the project was a Pan-African project whose partners include Ethiopia, NCDC and the University of Sheffield, U.K., among others with funding to come from African Development Bank(AfDB)
The Chief Molecular Bioengineer at the National Reference Laboratory of the NCDC, on his part, said he was mandated by the NCDC Director-General, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, to “launch this wonderful project.’’
According to him, the project is designed to solve the problem of RNA extraction kit which had become a global issue, adding that there were serious concerns for the need to have more extraction kits in-country, and that there was growing demand worldwide for extraction kits.
“The western world prioritises their own interest first by making sure that they meet their local needs before exporting to other countries, so there was really need for it,’’ he said,
He further disclosed that the first phase of the evaluation results he carried out with the NABDA scientific team was “awesome and successful.’’
“The kits compete favourably well with other international kits we are using, in fact, it scored highly in purity and in quantity of extraction and we are thinking of scaling production,’’ Nnaemeka said.
Nnaemeka also explained that to be able to conduct test, the viral information which comes as the RNA has to first be extracted and without this extraction, no test can be conducted.
“What will tell you that the virus is there is contained in the RNA, so RNA is required for you to be able to detect COVID-19,’’ he said, adding that as scientists, they would soon carry out the second phase of the evaluation which would involve real sample of COVID-19.
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Also speaking, Dr Rose Gidado, a scientist at NABDA and Country Coordinator, Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB), said the exercise was historic.
According to her, the validated RNAswift Test Kit for COVID-19 was developed by Dr Alison Nwokeoji, a Nigerian scientist at the University of Sheffield, U.K.
She also corroborated that the African Development Bank was taking over the manufacture of the test kits so as to expand Nigeria’s testing capacity with emphasis on farmers’ health.
According to her, the new test kit could test more than 20,000 people per day.
“If we set up more testing centres, we can easily do 50,000 with automation,’’ Gidado said.
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