The Federal Government says that Nigeria now has over 100 laboratories dedicated to Covid-19 testing nationwide.
This was disclosed by Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed in a press briefing with newsmen on Monday.
Mohammed said Nigeria started the pandemic with 2 centres but now boasts of over 100 public and private testing centres.
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“Nigeria has so far availed itself creditably in the fight against Covid-19 through the deployment of resources, mobilization and training of manpower and expansion of health infrastructure, particularly our testing capacity for Covid-19,” he said.
“From just two National Reference Laboratory for the testing of Covid-19, we now have over 100 laboratories, public and private, across all the states of the federation,” he added.
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Mohammed also added that centres were also built on state levels for the treatment of the disease and revealed that the FG encouraged local manufacturing of medical equipment for health workers.
” The federal government, through the Sustainable Production Pillar of the PTF, has been encouraging local manufacturing companies to embark on the production of consumables such as face masks, ventilators, hand sanitizers and face shields,” he said.
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What you should know
- Nairametrics reported last month that the Federal Government announced that 4 states are responsible for 64% of all coronavirus tests going on the country. The states are Lagos, FCT, Rivers and Ogun.
- In August, the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha said Nigeria has been conducting between 3,000–6,000 COVID-19 tests per day. He also noted that the country’s testing infrastructure can conduct 15,000 tests a day.
- The Federal Government also published the list of 100 passports of passengers who refused Covid-19 post-arrival test.
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