Nigeria has 10,000 daily testing capacity but doing less than 20% — NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control will commence the usage of the GeneXpert machines to test for COVID-19 cases beginning from June 14.

The NCDC disclosed this on Thursday on its Twitter handle.

“We are ready to do that GeneXpert labs in locations and will start functioning on June 14,” the body said.

NAN reports that GeneXpert machines, manufactured by the US-based firm, Cepheid, is one of the most widely-used TB diagnostic tools globally.

Nigeria currently has at least 400 GeneXpert instruments deployed in 399 health facilities across the country meant for tuberculosis diagnosis.

The NCDC said with the challenge of limited kits for COVID-19 testing in the country, some of these machines in each state will be re-configured for COVID-19 testing.

It said: “Each of the GeneXpert instruments in the country has 4-testing modules with testing capacity of about 24 samples per day.

“There are also available in the country two mobile laboratories equipped with two GeneXpert instruments each.

“These will be deployed as needed to support COVID-19 testing surge in target states.”

The agency stated that it has been working hard over the last two weeks to distribute the cartridges to the first seven centres to train them to make sure they are ready and on June 14 they will start testing.

The NCDC, however, decried the poor turnout of test samples from the states across the country.

The body stated that though the available laboratories could test up to 10,000 samples per day, they were only working at about 10 to 20 per cent of their capacity.

“The labs are there, the samples are not coming in as sufficiently as we want. We have this weekend for every state to push harder,” it stated.