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Ghana will begin daily testing of the COVID-19 virus starting Thursday, May 7 to pave the way for daily updates.
Until now, Ghana had conducted more than 130,000 tests with an accumulation of 1.9829 samples awaiting testing at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR), which they hope to eliminate before May 7.
However, the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) had no delays.
Professor William Kwabena Ampofo, Head of Virology at NMIMR, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ghana, revealed this in Accra at the press conference on COVID-19, organized by the Ministry of Information to give an update on the pandemic .
He assured Ghanaians that once the pending tasks are removed from the tests, they will be able to provide results within 24 hours to the Ghana Health Service when samples of contact tracing and hospital surveillance are received.
“We have expanded the evidence beyond Accra and Kumasi. There is limited evidence in Ho at the University of Health and Allied Sciences.”
“We expect a donation from International Atomic Energy through the Ministry of Health. We hope that by next week, this is fully established and, therefore, the tests in Ho can be increased for the Volta Region and also for the Oti Region” , said.
Professor Ampofo said that the Northern Region had test centers established in the Public Health Laboratory of the Tamale Teaching Hospital and also in the Laboratory of the Veterinary Services Directorate in Pong-Tamale.
He noted that these test centers would provide services for the northern sector.
“We hope that we can also test at War Memorial Hospital (at Navrongo) as soon as possible,” he said.
Professor Ampofo said that another testing center was being established in the Western Region at the Laboratory of the Directorate of Veterinary Services in Takoradi.
“This was being done in conjunction with the Afia Nkwanta Government Hospital Public Health Laboratory.”
“Therefore, it is a joint effort, a health approach that is practiced directly between the Ghana Health Service and the Veterinary Service Directorate.”
He said the test center in Takoradi, which is likely to start operating from May 6, will provide services for the Western Region.
“We are also going to use the expert gene system, which is prevalent in almost all regions of Ghana: there is a specific center that has an expert gene machine for tuberculosis (TB) and there is a test that has been developed for COVID-19 ,” he said.
Professor Ampofo said those facilities would complement the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test stations set up to test for COVID-19, adding that by the end of May, virtually all regions would be able to test for COVID-19.
He said that the Ghana Health Service and the Ministry of Health would determine the actual strategy for the test.
Source: GNA
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