• The two main laboratories are the National Influenza Centre in Nairobi and the Kenya Medical Research Laboratories also in Nairobi.
• The Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital will also be doing Covid-19 tests in the next 10 days.
The World Health Organisation has advised countries with weak health systems to invest in testing as part of their strategy to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
The only way an individual can know if he/she has Covid-19 is through a special lab test called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The test is a sophisticated molecular function that identifies certain genetic markers unique to the virus.
Timely testing for Covid-19 remains a challenge across the world.
“Without vital diagnostic capacity, countries are in the dark as to how far and wide the virus has spread and who has coronavirus or another disease with similar symptoms,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says.
Kenya, for instance, had no testing capacity at the beginning of the outbreak with test samples collected in the country being flown to South Africa for testing.
The good news is that a lot of effort has been made. There are two main laboratories in the country - the National Influenza Centre in Nairobi and the Kenya Medical Research Laboratories in Nairobi with branches at Kericho, Kisumu, Busia and Kilifi.
The Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital will be doing Covid-19 tests in the next 10 days. This will ease the strain on the National Influenza Centre in Nairobi.
The hospital will be testing 960 samples in eight hours.
“This will help us to quickly test our people, get results and respond accordingly,” Uasin Gishu Governor Jackson Mandago said.
Already, health workers who will be working at the centre have been trained.
Governors within the North Rift Economic Bloc had earlier asked the government to certify MTRH as a national testing centre for Covid-19 to support Kemri and the National Influenza Centre.
The move is aimed at ensuring that tests from the western part of the country are tested at the facility instead of travelling to Nairobi for the same.
Testing for a novel pathogen is not as simple and straightforward because the laboratory test kits have to be newly developed and confirmed to be working well.
The novel coronavirus was only discovered in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
“Researchers are working hard to develop antibody tests that can tell whether someone has been exposed to the virus. They could help answer how broadly this virus has spread, and whether there are milder cases not being detected,” WHO head of emergency programme Mike Ryan said.
Confirmatory testing for such new viruses requires PCR which identifies the virus in a sample using specific ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequence referred to as probes, that are exact match to the virus.
Researchers have identified that the coronavirus causing Covid-19 has mutated and there are two variants of the virus presently as seen from genetic sequencing.
Kemri laboratories have high tech machines with the capability of processing up to 2,000 samples in a day, and receive samples from 13 other countries including Madagascar, Somalia and the Seychelles for confirmation or validation.
However, unlike regular cold or flu, Covid-19, being a lower respiratory illness does not typically have runny nose or sore throat.
Currently it is not treatable. Nor is there a vaccine for it. What are treated are its symptoms such as fever and cough.
The transmission of Covid-19 is similar to that of other respiratory viruses like influenza.
This means that the infection occurs from contact with respiratory secretions of someone who is infected.
As such, the most important thing is to observe proper hygiene - washing hands with soap in running water or using alcohol-based hand sanitisers. Health experts say is unlikely that walking around with a mask makes any difference.
“Setting up the laboratories to test was not a difficult to-do process since local research and reference laboratories already have the equipment to run molecular PCR,” consultant pathologist at Lancet Group of Laboratories Ahmed Kalebi said.
He added: “The missing ingredient were the probes which are now available locally. The test can be done within the country through the Ministry of Health reference laboratories.”
Another testing centre has been set up at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi.
The centre has an isolation facility that can accommodate 12 patients at a time.
Tests which turn positive are sent to a government facility for confirmatory tests.
- mwaniki fm