COVID-19: Testing lab in Takoradi shorts test kits
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The Takoradi Veterinary Service Laboratory where the COVID-19 tests are done in the Western Region is running out of test kits for COVID-19 testing.
Samples taken from suspected infected persons have been pending at the facility for weeks due to this constraint. The test- lab is a Bio-Safety Level 3 and 2, was built by the Canadian Government to support veterinary services and research. However, due to the surge in cases of COVID-19 in the country, the facility has been converted to run test for COVID-19 and currently serves the Western Region and other parts of the Western North and Central Regions.
Managers of the facility run three hundred (300) tests per day.
The lab is currently struggling to even run two-thirds of its target set during its commissioning a month ago.
Head of the Takoradi Veterinary Laboratory, Oliver Boakye Dankwa, disclosed that the numbers trooping in each day is overwhelming. He mentioned that testing kits and other reagents are almost used up, and require replenishing, so they can run test on samples both from suspected persons and contacts of infected ones.
“Currently, we are doing 200 samples a day. Initially, when we started, we anticipated that we could do 300 a day but we are still working around the clock as it is now. We do have challenges and the challenges are usually with the supply. When we started there were only nine cases in the Western Region but since we started testing, we are picking up more positive cases. It has meant that we’ve had to go back and do more testing because we were receiving more contacts from these positive persons so the volume of work keeps increasing. So the things we use such as the kits and reagents can’t meet what we anticipated” he noted.
So far, the Western Region has recorded three hundred and fifty-two (352) cases of COVID-19. Six (6) people have recovered and only one (1) person have passed away.
Author: Abraham Mensah
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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