NCDC targets testing 2m Nigerians in 3 months

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has set a target to test two million people in three months.

This was announced by the DG of NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu, during the Presidential Task Force (PTF) press briefing on COVID-19.

According to him,“In collaboration with partners we have expanded our testing capacity. The lab strategic group for #COVID19 in Nigeria set a target to test two million people in 3 months”.

“Our goal remains to reduce transmission and we urge the public to avoid unessential travel. The only entry point to the control of #COVID19 in Nigeria is through testing”.

He however added that as we continue to scale up our testing capacity, “we seek strong collaboration of state governments and public health teams to ramp up sample collection from the right people”

Ihekweazu who admitted that this is an ambitious target noted that this is necessary because the best way to reduce the spread of the deadly virus is by testing more people.

“Our 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.

“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 said.

The NCDC boss, therefore, called for collaboration from all involved in order to make this target achievable.

He 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”.

“In order to test two million people in three months across the country, we need 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.

“We need the collaboration of people living in these states. The only entry point into control of this outbreak is through testing,” he added.