African countries have secured 90 million test kits for the novel coronavirus for the next six months, a regional disease control body said on Thursday, urging states and donors to boost testing capabilities on the continent as quickly as possible. “We needed to increase our testing very quickly to about 10 to 20 million tests to move ahead of the curve. This is a call to action which means we have to rally everybody,” said John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a branch of the African Union bloc. Nkengasong presented a new initiative, the Partnership to Accelerate Testing in Africa, which aims to increase testing across the continent. He added that 3.4 million tests have been conducted in Africa so far, about 1,700 tests per 1 million people, compared to 37,000 tests per 1 million in Italy and 30,000 per 1 million in Britain.
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES