By Gbadamosi Oladimeji
In a bid to hasten the testing activity in Nigeria, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has set the target of testing a total number of two million people within the next three months.
This was announced by the Director General of the NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, during the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 briefing in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
Ihekweazu who admitted that this is an ambitious target, added that it is necessary because the best way to reduce the spread of the deadly virus is by testing more people.
“In order to test two million people in three months across the country, NCDC needs to test about 50,000 per State. There is no other way we can achieve this, we need the cooperation of every State government in Nigeria; every department of public health.” He explained further.
He stated that NCDC’s goal is to avoid transmission, and to keep the States with no case or few cases exactly that way.
“How are we going to do this? We have learned from every country that the only way to do this is to test more people. The Laboratory Strategic Group that is responding to this outbreak has set itself the target of testing two million people in the next three months.” He said.
“This is a very ambitious target. We are working very hard with our development partners and all our friends, to equip our labs to be able to do this”, he added.
The NCDC boss, therefore, called for collaboration from all involved in order to make the target achievable.
Ihekweazu urged State governments, Public health departments across States, and residents, to support the NCDC to achieve the target.
“It is going to cost us a lot of money, but we can’t do this without a lot of collaborations from everyone.” He noted.
“We need the collaboration of people living in these States. The only entry point into the control of this outbreak is through testing,” He added.
Although, Nigeria is lagging behind as regards testing in proportion to its population, and in comparison with some other countries, this is the time to wake up and test more.
“We are lagging behind, but now we have to catch up,” Ihekweazu said.
As of the time of filing this report, the NCDC have tested 11,426, confirmed 1532, and discharged 255, with 44 deaths.
