Professor William Ampofo, the head of Virology at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research has revealed that, Ghana’s COVID-19 testing capacity is expected to increase to about 20,000 each week.
According to the Prof. Ampofo, they had received bulk of the supplies of testing materials and distributed them to the various testing centres across the country.
“We have received the bulk of the supplies including the reagents. So we have started distributing reagents to the existing testing sites. There are some essential parts of the PCR equipment yet to arrive. So when those parts arrive, then we will begin to review current testing and then strategically place the new PCR machines and the existing sites have some of the equipment added on. With regards to the GeneXpert platform, we are still waiting for the GeneXpert cassette which will enable us to test for COVID-19 on that platform in selected localities which will include the Upper West, Upper East, Central and parts of the old Brong Ahafo Region,” he said.
“This will mean the plan to have a PCR site in each of the regions can be achieved shortly. Then we will then be able to work out what exactly is the load of the testing. When we did the estimation, we were close to about 20, 000 tests per week we are able to distribute them across the ten centres. So we are looking at how that can be done and sustained”, the Noguchi head of virology disclosed.
However, Professor Ampofo also admitted to the stocking of a three-week-backlog-samples which could not be tested due to the shortage of testing materials which he said they would resolve immediately.
Source: GHANAFEED.COM
