The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says it has been directed by President Buhari to test 4,000 individuals per day for the COVID-19 virus.
This was disclosed by the Director-General of the NCDC, Chikwe Ihekweazu at the joint national briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
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He said the goal was to increase testing for the virus in Lagos to 2,000, while the rest of the country including the FCT has to carry out 2,000 tests per day.
He disclosed that the country currently has a testing capacity of 1,500 daily.
“We now have the capacity to test 1,500 people per day across the network. This capacity is not being fully utilized at the moment.
The challenge right now is not the laboratory testing capacity, it is how active our public workforce is in identifying samples, collecting and sending them for testing.
“We have sufficient capacity to test 1,500 right now and we’re not close to exhausting that capacity every day. But from today, we’ve to push even harder.
Our target following Mr. President’s speech is to get 2,000 samples per day in Lagos, 1,000 in Abuja and 1,000 for the rest of the country.
“…The challenge is no longer with the labs, the challenge is in collecting samples from those identified as suspect cases.”
Nigeria currently has 373 confirmed COVID-19 cases across the country.