Truly, Nigeria has lived up to its title of the African giant, take it or leave it, by being in the frontline once again on this battle against the covid-19 pandemic.
In light of this, recall that Dr. Oladipo Kolawole who led a group of Nigerian scientists' under the auspices of COVID-19 Research Group announced a roll-out of vaccines to prevent against getting infected by Covid-19 within the next 18 months, on Friday.
According to him, he said that the vaccines were developed locally and will be administered primarily only on Africans pending its complete approval and distribution internationally.
In the same vein, a group of researchers from the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), led by Christian Happi, a professor of molecular biology and genomics at ACEGID, at Ede, Osun State, today, announced the discovery of a new and cheap self-usable paper test kits that can identify Covid-19 status on a patient within 30 minutes.
According to the World Health Organization, testing is one of the major ways to prevent the spread of any virus from becoming a pandemic, and opinions from various people have shown that Africa has not been able to meet up with the required testing bench-marked numbers to certify its status on the covid-19 outbreak.
Other ways to minimize its spread are through contact tracing, social distancing, usage of face masks, and regular practice of good hygiene. However, quick testing takes the lead because it helps to immediately identify a person who’s at high risk of spreading the virus and tackling it by self-isolation or quarantining for a specific period.
Nevertheless, testing has been a major issue over the fight against Covid-19 in the continent, according to a statement to BBC from the director of the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), John Nkengasong, he narrated that, Africa as a content has only able to conclude 1.3 million tests on its residents.
He continued: “That translates to a continental average of one test per 1,000 people. There are however huge discrepancies between countries”. Although the continent is ramping up its testing capacity, Nigeria, its most populous nation of over 200 million people, has tested only 108,548 people, as of Saturday.
This challenge made the group of researchers at African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), led by Christian Happi, at Ede, Osun State to start a research that just discovered a new paper strip testing kit that will soon be rolled out to encourage easy testing and will eventually reduce the spread of the virus by a great percentage within the continent. For now, the Testing kit will only cost $3-N1,163, as against the cost of $12-N48,838, for the PCR testing kit that takes longer to conclude.
Let’s be prepared for mass testing, this is indeed a breakthrough for Africans in this pandemic fight.
Read also: Eureka! 1st Covid-19 Treatment Has Been Found in UK, Prime Minister Says
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