Africa Press-Nigeria:<\/p>\n
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said that six of its testing centers for diagnosing the coronavirus infection are equipped with molecular laboratories.<\/p>\n
Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, made this known in a tweet on the center\u2019sTwitter handle on Saturday.<\/p>\n
This news understands that at the start of the coronavirus outbreak in Nigeria, there were only five laboratories with such capacity.<\/p>\n
The facilities are; the NCDC\u2019s National Reference Laboratory (Abuja), Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (Edo), Redeemers University Nigeria (Ogun), Lagos University Teaching Hospital and Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (Lagos).<\/p>\n
Ihekweazu, however, said that the NCDC has extended its capacity to include the Virology Laboratory of the University College Hospital (Ibadan).<\/p>\n
He said; \u201cCurrently, samples from cases that meet the case definition are collected by the State Epidemiology Team, and transported through a defined process funded by NCDC, from the state to one of the testing laboratories.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe inclusion of one more laboratory will increase the capacity to detect cases in the country. NCDC Team will be in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, to set up COVID-19 testing capacity, in the existing Molecular laboratory within the state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201dEach laboratory costs about 150 million naira to build and equip initially, and millions of naira to maintain functionality.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur strategy is to find cases quickly, isolate, follow up with contacts and treat these cases. We are working very hard to flatten the curve in Nigeria,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Africa Press-Nigeria: The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said that six of its testing centers for diagnosing the coronavirus infection are equipped with molecular laboratories. Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, made this known in a tweet on the center\u2019sTwitter handle on Saturday. This news understands that at the start of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":23186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1438,29,14],"tags":[1453,1425],"class_list":["post-23185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-coronavirus-in-nigeria","category-head-lines","category-policy","tag-coronavirus-in-nigeria","tag-ncdc"],"yoast_head":"\n