KEMRI To Perform 12,000 Covid-19 Tests In A Day

The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) has revealed plans to undertake over 12,000 tests for the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Responding to a concerned Kenyans who had raised issue with the earlier announced 300 tests per day, KEMRI said they were in the middle of testing for SARS-COV-2 using manual assays.

“It was mentioned that the current country diagnostic capacity is 300 samples per day. Is this for all the centres you had mentioned that can conduct tests or the National Influenza Centre only?” One Ondari Mogeni had posed.

To which KEMRI responded “Currently, KEMRI is testing for SARS-COV-2 using manual assays, which were put together at very short notice. Very shortly, high throughput assays will come into use, with a capacity of thousands of tests These assays can provide at least 12000 test results a day.”

Kenya recently received 25,000 test kits from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, which Kenya’s Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe announced would ease the testing of patients as the country can currently only test slightly over 300 people per day.