COVID-19 Anti-Body Test Kits Failed Validation — Health Minister, Osagie Ehanire Says
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, on Thursday spoke about various test kits said to be in use in Nigeria for the control of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially antibody-based test kits. He was speaking in Abuja during the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
The minister said all the four kits had been evaluated by the Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigeria and that they all failed the validation tests. He said that no antigen test kits had yet been evaluated and “this means that results obtained from these tests are not tenable for diagnostics, being deficient in sensitivity and specificity and are likely to give false results and mislead people.
“The NCDC certified laboratories in Nigeria use WHO recognized PCR testing methods which give reliable result. ...