Image: Uwe Gille [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Health care workers urged to look out for ‘wrong and misleading’ antibody tests
Many Covid-19 antibody tests sold in Nigeria may be “wrong and misleading”, the country’s health minister has warned.
Osagie Ehanire said in a statement on 6 June that four Covid-19 test kits commonly used in the country had failed validation tests by the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria. Ehanire said only lab-based tests using polymerase chain reaction technology are reliable.
“Though expensive, this option is right and we have 30 laboratories deployed, with the aim of establishing at least one laboratory in every state,” he said.
Ehanire urged health workers to “have a high index of suspicion” because of the existence of unreliable tests. He said that while the pandemic in Nigeria is gathering pace the rate of increase and total number of cases remains lower than in many other countries.
As of 10 June Nigeria had reported nearly 14,0000 Covid-19 cases and 382 deaths. The country has the third highest number of cases on the continent and ranks fifth by deaths. However, official death tolls do not take into account hundreds of suspected Covid-19 deaths reported from Kano in Northern Nigeria.