The latest epidemiological report by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has shown that 57 out of 96 public COVID-19 laboratories across the country are currently not performing.
In total, the agency’s laboratory network performance audit report showed that a cumulative of 60 laboratories – public (57) and corporate (3) are not performing.
Out of the 57 public laboratories, 43 of them are testing but not reporting, 13 are not testing, and one laboratory is testing but not sequential. Of the three non-performing corporate laboratories, two are testing but their data are not accessible, while one is testing but not reporting.
The non-performing public laboratories, therefore, represent 59 percent of the total number of public laboratories in the country testing for COVID-19.
It was gathered that there are over 150 laboratories testing for COVID-19 in Nigeria. These testing facilities are within the NCDC laboratory network. 96 of these laboratories are public, 83 are private and 6 are corporate.
According to the NCDC, as of August 28, 2022, a total of 5,536,089 COVID-19 tests have been conducted, with 3,929,754 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 1,607,910 rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) tests done
Furthermore, in two weeks (between August 15 and 28, 2022), COVID-19 tests dropped from 25,711 to 20,643, representing a 19.7 percent drop in the testing rate across the country.
