Franco Mufinda was responding this Friday in the National Assembly to concerns raised by Members about the slowness in carrying out a massive test among the population, as part of the approval of the third request to extend the state of emergency for a further 15 days because of the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus.
The country has so far registered 36 positive cases out of a total of just over 4000 tests, with two deaths and 11 people recovered, and is complying with the state of emergency decreed on 27 March.
According to the government, testing is being carried out on different population groups and not only on arriving passengers, before the declaration of the national fence.
"The covid-19 brought a challenge, the growth of knowledge, which is almost daily, and more than that, the very logistics of this decision-making process, so that we started with just over 100 tests donated by the World Health Organization (WHO), with the emergence of the first suspect case and today we have in the country a capacity that has gone from a make of 90 tests per day to just over 350," he said.
The governor stressed the country now has three testing points and plans to expand testing into 15 provinces by next week "using 'genexpert,' which is the device that performs tuberculosis testing.
"We have already distributed 300 swabs in each province to carry out the harvest and thus read what happens in society," he said.
Franco Mufinda clarified that, epidemiologically, it is impossible to test the entire population and "nobody does it in the world".
"What matters here is to choose a sample that is representative of society, while logistically we have access to the tests," he said.
"The WHO has not yet recommended the use of rapid tests, because they bias the results, we use in Angola the gold test, the standard, which is the RT-PCR, it is with this and adding the 'genexpert', which broadens our base," he added.
On a global level, according to a balance sheet of the AFP news agency, the covid-19 pandemic has already caused about 267,000 deaths and infected more than 3.8 million people in 195 countries and territories.
