…African countries might experience a shortage of COVID-19 test kits
The need to make testing measures available during the period of this pandemic has made the African countries secure up to 90 million coronavirus testing kits.
A regional disease control body said on Thursday the 4th of May, 2020 that testing capabilities must be provided as soon as possible across Africa. The body urges all states and donors to make this possible by probably doing all in their power to make sure these kits are made available.
John Nkengasong , the head of the Africa Centre for Disease Control (Africa CDC), a branch of the African Union Bloc said that there is the need to test about 10 to 20 million people in coming years. “This is a call to action which means we have to rally everybody,” he says.
The head of the Africa CDC presented a new initiative called the Partnership to Accelerate Testing in Africa (PACT). The initiative is meant to better increase the rate of testing across the continent. He also said that 3.4 million tests have been conducted so far in Africa.
It was also said in South Africa there is what could be described as a global shortage of test kits as about 96,000 specimens still awaited tests.
Even with the huge supplies of COVID-19 test kits, there is still a gap in the testing of Africa and that of Europe as the former has yet to meet up with the latter.
The cases of coronavirus in Africa keep increasing and has now seen a total amount of 4, 592 deaths, 161, 793 confirmed cases and 69, 953 recoveries.
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