Following the rise in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said by the end of this week, there will be four new molecular diagnostic laboratories for testing the COVID-19.
The need to have more laboratories is highly crucial as confirmed case total 238 on Monday, April 6.
NCDC director-general, Chikwe Ihekweazu, while disclosing this on Monday at the sixth joint national briefing of the Presidential Taskforce Force (PTF) on COVID-19 said the centres will be in Kano, Kaduna, Jos and Maiduguri.
He said: “We are working to activate two labs in Kano and Kaduna at the same time from tomorrow (Tuesday), and two labs in Jos and Maiduguri from Thursday.
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We are solely assessing every state in the country, but we are starting with states that we already know have a baseline capacity to build on.
Ihekweazu further noted that 30% of all the COVID-19 cases had been found through contact tracing and the centres are using an electronic platform to track all the cases.
These new laboratories will be an addition to nine molecular diagnostic laboratories to test for COVID-19 located in Abuja, Lagos, Edo, Osun, Oyo, and Ebonyi states
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that currently, the NCDC has two laboratories in Lagos, while Abuja, Ibadan, Osun and Edo have one respectively. With increasing cases of COVID-19 in the country, the need for additional facilities to conduct the test has become necessary to avoid losing probable cases to the community.
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