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Deputy Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Toby Okechukwu, has canvassed expansion of testing centres for coronavirus across the country.
In a statement, he described the 2,000 COVID-19 tests so far carried out in Nigeria as insufficient for the country’s population of over 200 million people and advocated an upgrade of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) laboratories to facilitate mass-testing for the virus.
Okechukwu noted that laudable as lockdown directive in parts of the country was, keeping people indoors and tracking over 6,000 contacts, the country should also rapidly boost its testing capabilities to expand beyond the current seven centres.
“Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said only 2,000 Nigerians have been tested in over one month of combating COVID-19. The figure is quite low for a country of about 200 million people.
“Our first line of responsibility on this, therefore, is to ensure that testing services are available in, at least, all the states of the federation. If we are tracking over 6,000 contacts, then we need more testing facilities,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Anambra Football Academy has been counting its losses following the outbreak of Coronavirus, which has affected screening for the Federation of Youths Soccer Clubs of Nigeria (FEYSOC) tournament for Enugu Zone.
Its Director, Emmanuel Nwoye, said the team’s management had fixed screening for the youngsters, who wished to participate in this year’s FEYSOC tournament to avail themselves of the screening between April 3 and April 6, 2020.
The screening was meant for Under-10 to Under-13 and Under-14 to Under-19 categories. The team placed second in the 2019 edition of FEYSOC losing 1–2 to the overall champion, Ishiofe FC of Delta State.
