The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control on Tuesday said its target is to have two million Nigerians get tested in the next three months.
The NCDC DG, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu disclosed this at the daily media briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja.
He also raised concerns about the COVID-19 cases in Kano and the increasing number of deaths in the state. He said that the FG would step up testing and other states in the country.
It has earlier been reported that President Muhammadu Buhari had sent a team of experts to Kano State on Tuesday, not up to 24 hours that he imposed a total lockdown on the state.
The NCDC DG also disclosed that Nigeria was lagging in terms of testing people for the coronavirus pandemic as compared to South Africa.
He noted that achieving the two million targets would be impossible without enormous financial support. He said at least 50,000 samples need to be tested in each of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory within the set period to achieve the two million targets.
Ihekweazu said, “In order to test two million people in three months, we need to test 50,000 samples per state, depending on population size.”
The NCDC DG said that he would be aggressively engaging all state governments in the coming weeks, this is to ask them to work with the PTF to increase the testing capacity.
that over the next few weeks, he would be engaging aggressively with all state governments, asking them to work with the PTF in order to increase the capacity to test more people.
