COVID-19: Hold States Responsible For Numbers Of Test Says NCDC Boss

…Says it now tests 2,000 samples daily

The Federal Government on Thursday urged citizens to hold states government responsible for the number of tests being carried out daily across the country.

It said that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is poised to test 2,000 samples daily, however, the major challenge lies in states’ capacity to collect and send in the right samples for testing in time.

The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, made this known during a television programme.

According to him, “Right now we are testing 2,000 samples a day in all the laboratories in our network. In the national reference lab for example, no samples stay till the next day; every single sample comes out the same day or very early the next morning.

“We are testing every sample that comes through. This is the same for other laboratories in our network. There hasn’t been any stock-out of reagents recently and we are maintaining that supply chain.

“Many of the reagents that we expecting are arriving this week and some next week. Right now, the challenge is on the state to collect more samples and send them to the lab to enable us do the testing that we need to do to inform the outbreak response across the country, while maintaining the case definition that we’ve offered.

“We have published the number of samples collected across every state in Nigeria. People should interrogate the state that are not collecting the sample through which the diagnosis has been made. We are doing our part in the NCDC with the support of the Federal Government, partners and private sector, and we will continue to build up our capacity.

“In terms of the lab capacity, we are ready to do a lot more; the labs have organised themselves and they’re working around the clock. We are happy with the evolution of our laboratory capacity, and we just need the rest of the system to work together to get in the samples from the right people into the labs to enable the testing happen.”

He added: “When I say we will test 2 million, what I mean precisely is that the country will have the ability to test 2 million people in 3 months. Meeting that target depends on many parts of the chain – who is collecting the sample, appropriate collection and sending it to the labs.

“If you see that we test 1,000 samples in the day, that is exactly the number of samples that we get; we are not going to manufacture samples in order to meet some fictitious targets. The target that we have set for ourselves is in terms of the capacity that we have, but the actual throughput is dependent on the system, the people collecting the sample from the right individuals.

“The laboratories are good to go but our challenge now is the other systems to join us in this battle. However, remember that testing is not a magic bullet; right now we need to accommodate the people that come out positive, and show that we are carrying out these non-pharmaceutical intervention, so that we reduce transmission and the number of cases that we are seeing.

“Testing is important, but I see that there is an overt focus on testing because of the numbers that were published; there are other parts of the chain that needs to work for us to get on top of this outbreak. If we keep focusing on one part of that chain we missed the bigger picture.”