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With the increase in Covid-19 cases, Ethiopia has opened a facility to produce kits to detect the coronavirus and says its researchers are working to develop and test a vaccine.
The company that produces the test kits is a joint venture with a Chinese company called BGI Health Ethiopia.
The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Ethiopia has risen to nearly 64,000, causing nearly 1,000 deaths, according to government figures.
Ethiopia also opened a field hospital today to house up to 200 severely affected Covid-19 patients, which will begin admitting patients immediately.
Ethiopia has performed more than 1.1 million tests, making it the African country that has performed the third-highest number of tests, according to Ethiopian health officials. The country is struggling with a shortage of test kits, ventilators and intensive care beds, they said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said during the factory inauguration that the laboratory would produce 10 million test kits per year, to be used domestically and exported, with priority to other African countries.
The factory will also provide commercial laboratory services for 3 million transit passengers at Bole International Airport and in the city of Addis Ababa, the prime minister said, adding that this will increase the testing capacity of Ethiopia and other African countries.
Abiy also announced that Ethiopian researchers have been working to develop a vaccine, which is entering a laboratory testing stage.
Local production of the test kits will have a major impact on boosting Ethiopia’s ability to fight the disease, Yared Agidew, director of Ethiopia’s main Covid-19 treatment center in the capital Addis Ababa, told the Associated Press. “By conducting further testing, we will be able to identify positive cases in the community and take appropriate steps to control the spread,” he said.
Ethiopian Health Minister Lia Tadesse said community broadcasts are the main cause of the increase in cases.
It is mainly related to the behavior of communities and the existence of other risk events such as living in congested environments, he said. Ethiopian migrants returning from Middle Eastern countries are not seen as a cause of the growing number of cases, he said, explaining that all returnees must go through a quarantine period.
