NCDC DG says Nigeria desperately in need of Covid-19 test kits

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Director General (DG), Chikwe Ihekweazu, has said that the country was in desperate need of Covid-19 testing kits.

He stated this in a tweet on his Twitter handle, @Chikwe_I, on Sunday.

He wrote, “We’re desperately looking for more RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) extraction kits as we expand #COVID19 testing.”

He went further to indicate the specification of the test kits and preferred producers as:

“Product: Total viral RNA extraction kits (preferably spin column and with a lysis buffer). Manufacturers: Qiagen, ThermoFischer, SeeGene, Inqaba, LifeRiver etc.”

While South Africa have tested 161,000; Ghana has done 100,622, Egypt 90,000 but Nigeria, Africa’s must populous nation with over 200 million people had only tested 10,061 persons for Covid-19.

In a recent video on social media, a grandmother, Salma Ahmed had accused the NCDC of refusal to pick her telephone calls.

READ ALSO: Nigeria records 91 new cases of COVID-19 as total hits 1273

She said she had called on the agency to inform it of the case of her son-in-law who later died of Covid-19 in Kano.

She had in the video claimed that her son-in-law died of the virus unattended to owing to alleged neglect by NCDC officials.

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