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The Director General (DG) of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu has said the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing approach being used by Ghana would not be replicated for Nigeria.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports Dr Ihekweazu stated this on Thursday during a live media briefing on the regional response to COVID-19 in Africa with the Word Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti and others.
“We have been slow to start but those that understand molecular diagnosis know that it is not a simple thing to do. It is complex so I would rather go a little bit slower and get it right than speed into a situation that we will end up regretting.
“Some managed acceleration is exactly what we are doing with a deliberate strategy on how to scale. Ghana has a different approach to testing. I know exactly what they are doing. I respect what they are doing. But we don’t want to go down that path because it has its limitations.
“I want to assure everyone that we have learnt a lot of lessons from this. One of the biggest ones is that you have to build up your laboratory capacity,” Dr Ihekweazu said.
TNG recalls that Head of Virology at the Noguchi Medical Research Institute, Professor William Ampofo had on Wednesday during a press briefing explained Ghana’s approach to COVID-19 testing.
“We simply pool the samples, meaning that, if you have 1,000 samples, you put them in groups of 10 and you test 100 pools at a time.
“So in a short time, instead of testing 1,000 samples, you test 10,000 samples. This method we are using now was derived in 1945 and this very efficient way we have proceeded,” Professor Ampofo explained.
At the time of filing this report, Ghana ha 1154 confirmed COVID-19 cases with around 70,000 tests while Nigeria has 873 confirmed cases with under 10,000 tests.