Plans to increase daily testing capacity of COVID-19 to 2000 samples in Lagos state and 1000 in FCT and other states of the country has been announced by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
The disclosure was made by Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director-General, NCDC, during the daily Presidential Task Force briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja Yesterday.
He said it takes 12 hours to report negative cases when testing for COVID-19 in the country and much longer to report positive cases. 
Ihekweazu said that the inhibiting factor to COVID-19 testing was not the number or capacity of the laboratories but the ability to identify suspected cases, in line with the expanded case definition.
“It also includes collecting samples from them and getting as many samples as possible into the laboratory for testing,” he explained.
He said the country has now been equipped with 12 COVID-19 testing laboratories, so as to bring testing closer to Nigerians.
The NCDC boss further noted that the ultimate goal was to have one laboratory in each state of the federation.
“We currently have capacity to test 1,500 people per day, but it is not being fully utilised at the moment,” he stated.
Ihekweazu also explained that those to be tested for COVID-19 were into three categories, that is, returning travellers showing fever and respiratory symptoms as well as contacts of returning travellers showing symptoms.
The other category, according to him, is those showing respiratory symptoms of unknown origin
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