The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 has stated that the low number of cases being recorded lately in the country is traceable to a decline in testing.
The statement was made on Monday, August 31, 2020, by the Head of Disease Surveillance for the NCDC, Elsie Ilori, who disclosed that the low testing is due to low sample collection.
She added that states like Kano, Lagos, Oyo, Edo, and Abuja had the biggest decrease in the number of samples taken in August.
Her words:
“In the month of August, we had very low number of samples collected.
In July, there were seven states with decreased samples collected, but unfortunately, in August, it increased to 32 states with decreased samples collection. In July, we had 13 states that actually collected over 1,000 samples. For August, no state met that target. That means we had zero states collecting over 1,000 samples.
For the local government areas, in July we had 515 that collected samples and it decreased to 478 in August. We can appreciate the decrease in August.
In August, states with the biggest increase are Abia (682), Sokoto (331), Bayelsa (314), Zamfara (55) and Yobe (12), but the numbers are not significant at all.
In the same month, the biggest decrease in sample collection are Kano (19,108), Lagos (13,146), Oyo (4,902), Edo (3,327), and FCT (3,322). August sample collection has decreased drastically.
Concerning where samples are being collected, in July, in Benue, Ebonyi, FCT, Lagos, Plateau, all the LGA in these states had samples collected, while only in Delta, Edo, and Ogun, only one local government area did not collect samples.
Concerning local government areas that did not collect samples, in July, Kogi had 19 out of 20 local government areas without samples collected. Also in August, no local government in Kogi collected samples. In Katsina, only 24 local government areas collected samples – Jigawa (22), Kano (20), Taraba (16).
Even though in Lagos all the local government areas are collecting samples, the number of samples collected was quite low. So, that brought down the number of samples collected for August.”
