Men walk past health workers in a mobile testing clinic to queue for screening and test for COVID-19 at Lenasia South, south Johannesburg, South Africa, Tuesday, April 21, 2020, during a campaign aimed to combat the spread of Coronavirus. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
Unlike Nigeria where COVID-19 testing is largely reliant on the government, the private sector in South Africa has conducted more tests than the country’s public sector.
Data shared by Zweli Mkhize, the country’s minister of health, shows that as of Wednesday, 105,491 samples for COVID-19 have been tested in the private sector.
The number is 57 percent of the total 185,497 tests so far conducted for the disease in South Africa.
The country’s public sector conducted the remaining 80,006, equalling 43 percent of their testing capacity.
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More than six million people have been screened for #Covid_19 and almost 200,000 tests have been conducted so far. pic.twitter.com/aqFGetKi6R
— Zweli Mkhize (@DrZweliMkhize) April 29, 2020
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The data also shows the country conducted over 7,027 tests in 24 hours, which would take Nigeria eight days to achieve with the country’s current daily testing capacity of 861.
In Nigeria, much of the 13,689 tests conducted as of Wednesday have been largely overseen by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
However, the NCDC recently unveiled plan to work with partners and the private sector to rapidly scale testing capacity to every state in the country.
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