‘Coronavirus cases dropping due to low testing’ – Presidential Task Force

The task force, which is in charge of COVID-19, revealed that the low COVID-19 cases being reported across the country is not as a result of the reduced cases in the country but because of low testing.

This was disclosed on 31 August by the Head of Disease Surveillance, NCDC, Elsie Ilori, who noted that the low testing is due to low sample collection.

She also noted that states like Kano, Lagos, Oyo, Edo, and FCT had the biggest decrease in sample collection in August. She said:

“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.”