Andrew Kathindi
It could take Namibia five years to reach the target of 200,000 tests for COVID-19 if the Ministry of Health’s target of 100 tests per day is the comparative standard.
Deputy minister of health, Esther Muinjangue last week said the ministry is planning to execute 100 tests per day in an effort to reach the overall national target of 200,000 COVID-19 tests as announced by health minister Dr Kalumbi Shangula in April.
At that pace, it will take Namibia just over five years to reach this intended target.
This comes as the ministry is still to consider mobile clinics or other alternatives to pick up the pace on the number of tests that the country can conduct, with PathCare Namibia and Namibia Institute of Pathology (NIP) remaining the only approved test centres.
Namibia is currently one of the lowest COVID-19 testing countries in SADC. Namibia has to date done just over 2,074 tests for the coronavirus. In comparison, despite having similar numbers in population, Botswana has so far conducted 11,945 according to the government’s website. South Africa has to date conducted 403,018 tests.
As of Thursday, Zimbabwe according its Health Ministry has conducted 13,699 rapid screening tests and 11,191 Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.
With Stage 2 of the lockdown underway, there has been a concern that there haven’t been enough tests done to confirm that the virus is not spreading in Namibia.
COVID-19 National Coordinator and former health minister Bernhard Haufiku, a medical doctor, told the Windhoek Observer that although the numbers covered by testing haven’t been satisfactory, the government has revised its stance on mass testing.
“We no longer talk of mass testing or even the testing of 200,000 people as we realized that this will practically not be possible in terms of not only time issues but also resources, including human resources. We also think that testing 200,000 may not be cost effective, given that it has been more than a month now that we have not picked up any new case of COVID-19 in Namibia. All these factors made us revise our testing target from 200,000 to 100,000 in a targeted manner. Even the 100,000 testing goal may be reviewed at time, depending on whether the virus evolves further,” he said.
This comes after the former health minister expressed worry at the potential of local transmissions due to the low number of people being tested. He had stated that the country’s testing levels were too small to conclude that there is no further community transmission.
Haufiku previously stated his wish for the Namibia Institute of Pathology (NIP) to decentralize COVID-19 testing as soon as possible as it can become catastrophic if the pandemic grows with only centralized testing. To date the only other institution conducting tests is Pathcare Namibia, both in Windhoek.
According to NIP Board Chairman, Bryan Eiseb, speaking at the handover of a N$4.8 million-dollar donation by the Social Security Commission (SSC), which will allow the NIP to purchase reagents that will allow them to upscale their testing rate significantly, he said the organization had only conducted 1,319 tests to date.
The NIP, according to Eiseb, already has machinery that will allow it to conduct over a thousand tests per day but was lacking reagents which need to be imported from Europe and America. Reagents are a substance or mixture for use in chemical analysis or other reactions.
“With the SSC donation, the NIP will be able to procure reagents and other necessities for approximately 8,695 tests. COVID-19 will remain a health threat for a while and as the country gradually starts relaxing the state of emergency regulations, the NIP must remain prepared to test all suspected cases referred to it because we may see an upsurge in the infection rate when we start to normalize things in the country,” Eiseb said.
He added that with winter time approaching, there is likely to be an upsurge in the amount of people contracting flu which may result in the NIP being confronted with a high volume of testing requests.
The SSC donation will also allow the NIP to decentralize testing to Oshakati, Katima Mulilo, Keetmashoop and Walvis Bay.
