COVID-19: Growing national testing‘ll enable Nigerians understand virus – NCDC

The federal government has said that increasing the national testing capacity for COVID-19 is one of the most important ways to make Nigerians understand the burden of the disease, especially that the nation is recording more cases than ever.

The Director General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, represented by the Head of Department, Surveillance and Epidemiology Department, NCDC, Mrs Elsie Ilori, said this on Thursday in Abuja at the joint national briefing of the Presidential Tasks Force (PTF) on COVID-19.

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According to her, within the last 24 hours, the country has recorded 1,664 new confirmed cases.

Mrs Ilori said: “In the last week, over 40,000 tests were done.

“This is more than a 10 percent increase in the testing done the week before.

“Since, the start of the outbreak, we have worked tirelessly to achieve this through the rapid expansion of laboratories across the country and increased surveillance activities.

“This is enabling the prompt detection of cases reported, even at our points of entry.”

She, however, said that the reality of increasing transmission, test positivity rate, and confirmed cases remained a cause for concern in the second wave the country was experiencing.

“There is, therefore, a need for stricter adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as; the proper use of face masks, frequent handwashing, and maintaining a physical distance of at least two meters.

“With the increasing infection across states, strategic actions have been employed in engaging and retraining focal persons in health care facilities, to enhance IPC practices in Health facilities and prevent transmission.

“We want to remind our health care workers not to let their guards down and adhere to IPC measures to prevent being infected. In the last week, we concluded the distribution of COVID-19 commodities to all states as well as Primary Health Centres,” Ilori said.