NCDC boss, Chikwe Iheweazu

The Director-General of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), Chikwe Iheweazu, has noted that Nigeria now has a testing capacity of 3,000 persons per day, targeting to test 2,000 samples in Lagos, 1,000 in Abuja and in the rest of the country daily.

Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director-General of NCDC, said this at the daily Presidential Task Force briefing on Wednesday in Abuja, while giving an update on COVID-19 in the country.

The NCDC boss said that the testing capacity was not being fully utilised, “That is why we focus on Lagos and the FCT because of the efforts they are making to get more people tested.”

He added that its main challenge is not testing for Coronavirus, but collection of samples and getting them to laboratories.

“The bottleneck now is in getting the samples from the right people. We are now scaling up sample collection. We are helping Lagos State to set up sample collection facilities in 20 health facilities in the state”.

Ihekweazu said that the agency would test more people as its testing capacity had improved significantly.

“We want to make it easier for people who need to give samples to do so. Our call centre capacity has also improved; so, please call us if you need to,” he said.

He added that NCDC would publish a diagnostic strategy so that Nigerians would be aware of the locations of its  offices.