Just In: Nigeria develops, launches COVID-19 test kit

The Federal Government of Nigeria, on Thursday, launched a diagnostic kit, RNASwift, for the identification of coronavirus’ causal agent. 

The new diagnostic kit was designed, developed and validated by Nigerian scientists.

It holds huge potentials for the country’s plan at scaling up testing for COVID-19, the acting Director-General of National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), Prof Alex Akpa, whose agency produced the kit, said at the launch in Abuja on Thursday.

“The diagnostic kit is a product of cutting-edge biotechnology, which involves the exploitation of molecular biology to design, develop and validate a cost-effective but yet very top-of-the-range kit for COVID-19 testing”, Prof Akpa said.