The Lagos State Government says its testing capacity currently stands at 850 persons in a day.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu disclosed this on Saturday during the state’s COVID-19 briefing.
According to Governor Babajide Sanwo-olu who was speaking at Express briefing in Lagos, the capacity to test COVID-19 suspected cases can be increased to about 1,500 to 2,000 daily with the availability of adequate extraction kits.
He said “Our combined lab capacity is at about 850 tests daily.
“This is easily scalable to 1,500 and 2,000 subject to the availability of extraction kits considering the acute global shortage,”…
He further disclosed that efforts are in top gear to increase the capacity for the state to test as the state has paid fully for over 20,000 extraction kits and has placed an order for another 20,000 in its bid to test at least 120,000 suspected persons in the next 60 days.
He also noted that the state has commenced a biweekly procurement of laboratory needs “to prevent running out of these materials going forward, until at least 120,000 tests are done in about 2 months”.
On Friday, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, had stated that isolation and treatment centres in the country are running out of bed spaces, with more cases reported by the NCDC with 3,913 cases today.
Lagos has remained the epicentre of the virus in the country with a total of 1,667 cases. While the state has also recorded an encouraging number of recoveries (of over 400 persons), there are still concerns about the increasing number of community transmissions.
To alay fears of many individuals and organisations who are worried about testing more persons the Governor assured Lagosians that in addition to the increased testing capacity the Isolationcapacity is also being stepped up.
“we are also actively increasing our isolation capacity”.
“You will also see a change in our Isolation strategy in the weeks ahead, as we transition towards decentralisation,” he added.
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