By Kemo Cham
Sierra Leone is still struggling to meet its target in terms of testing for Covid-19, latest government data on the pandemic reveals.
Despite a gradual increase in tests conducted in the last five weeks, weekly testing has reduced in the last week, figures in the latest weekly Situation Report on the pandemic - Sitreps 37 - released on Monday, show. It shows that laboratory testing for Covid-19 for last week (Epi week 36), reduced by 12.1% compared to Week 35.
As of September 7, 2020, the country has conducted 29, 565 (3.86 tests/1000 population), cumulative number of COVID-19 tests. Average number of daily tests in the last seven days is 287.
Sierra Leone has been working on increasing its daily testing to 1000, as part of an effort to ramp up its response to the pandemic. Officials have always blamed lack of testing capacity – labs and test kits - for the low number of daily tests. But these figures indicate that much more than laboratory capacity is required to increase testing.
The figures show that 4 out of 16 districts reported COVID-19 cases over the last one week. These are Western Area Urban, Western Area Rural, Kailahun and Kono.
This Sitrep, which is the Epidemiological Week 37, is the 24th week of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
As of Monday, 7th September 2020, the country had recorded 2, 055 cumulative confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, 71 deaths and 1611 recoveries in Sierra Leone.
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