BEVERLY HILLS, April 27, (THEWILL) – The director of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Chikwe Ihekweazu, has revealed that Nigeria is desperately in need of testing materials to expand the daily testing capacity for the coronavirus
Ihekweazu, who disclosed this on Twitter, also gave specification of the test kits Nigeria was looking for and preferred manufacturers.
He wrote: “We’re desperately looking for more RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) extraction kits as we expand #COVID19 testing. Product: Total viral RNA extraction kits (preferably spin column and with a lysis buffer). Manufacturers: Qiagen, ThermoFischer, SeeGene, Inqaba, LifeRiver etc.”
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Nigeria has the worst testing coverage in countries with over 1,000 cases in Africa and anywhere in the world, based on data from worldometer.info.
Official figures of Nigeria’s coronavirus infections crossed a thousand threshold on Friday but there are indications the figures could be more but for poor testing capacity.
Health authorities have conducted over 10,000 tests out of a population of nearly 200 million and found 1, 273 infected persons, including 40 health workers, and 40 deaths.
