Chikwe Ihekweazu,
director of general of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), says the
country is not playing a game of numbers with tests for coronavirus.
Speaking at the
media briefing of the presidential task force on COVID-19 in Abuja on Thursday,
the NCDC DG said Nigeria had fared well in the fight against coronavirus.
A journalist had
asked if it should not be a source of concern that African countries that
recorded cases after Nigeria had tested far more people than Nigeria.
The journalist cited
South Africa with over 120,000 COVID-19 tests and Ghana (0ver 60,000 tests) as
examples.
In his response,
Ihekweazu said: “We have a very good strategy around testing. Yes, the numbers
are always being thrown at us, Ghana, South Africa, but we are not playing a
numbers game.”
“So I think there
would be a change in the numbers. But to be honest, we are not playing a number
game with testing. We have a strategy and we will stick to that strategy and
make sure we deliberately increase the number of tests while testing the right
people at the right time.”
Ihekweazu also
addressed the demand of making testing mandatory as a measure to detect cases
on time and to limit community transmission.
“Not even the most
resourced country in the world has made testing mandatory.Before we test
anyone, we go through a risk assessment to make sure it is appropriate to test
you,” he said.
“Up until recently,
we had about five thousand tests but in the last week, we have gone up from
five thousand to ten thousand.
“So if you imagine,
from the beginning of the outbreak to last week, we’ve tested five thousand,
then in the last week, we’ve tested another five thousand. And we are going to
continue scaling our testing rapidly.”
In its latest report
released on Thursday evening, NCDC said a total of 9,522 persons had been
tested for COVID-19 in Nigeria out of which 873 tested positive.
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