COVID-19: Collaboration with private labs raises test by 50% - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet:

The government of Lagos State has said that accreditation of some seven private and public laboratories increased testing on the populace over COVID-19 by 50 per cent, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Disclosing this, the incident commander and governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, informed NaijaAgroNet at the weekend that in June, for instance they expanded COVID-19 testing capacity in Lagos with the accreditation of seven private laboratories.

“In the week ending July 26, 2020, we successfully tested close to 9,000 samples in Lagos State, across the public and private sector laboratories, a 50% increase from the approximately 6,000 samples tested in each of the preceding two weeks..” he said.

Lagos, he said, believes that this increased testing will lead to an rise in the number of daily confirmed cases of the CoronaVirus in Lagos State.

“This is a welcome development, since our capacity to contain the pandemic depends significantly on how successful we are in identifying all the existing cases,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu also mentioned that they have seen a general decrease in positivity rates in Lagos State over the past two weeks, which, combined with the increase in testing numbers, paints a very encouraging picture of the outcome of responses strategy.

“We will continue to fine-tune our efforts and strategies to build on our successes and close any existing gaps,” he said.

Lagos, he said, has patterned response strategy after Mumbai, India, which like Lagos is a densely populated mega-city with similar demographic and climatic conditions.

“I must however say that we are also recording similar results in terms of our successes,” he said.

Nenye Dom/Editor

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