Electronic transmission of COVID-19 results begins soon, NCDC says

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is set to begin the electronic transmission of COVID-19 results.

With this People will no longer have to wait for long periods to receive their results as they can easily use a code to electronically check for it.

The Director-General of the NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, made this known Monday in Abuja during the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing.

He said, “There is an online platform that is being set up at the moment to enable the electronic transmission of results come back to patients. We have been working very hard on that. This should be launched over the next few days and hopefully by the end of the weekend.

“You can go in yourself and check your results once you have been tested and you have a code that is given to you. This way you don’t rely on several steps between Federal, laboratories and States government in order to share those results.

“At the moment, if you need printed-out results, you can get it. Some people require printed-out results for different reasons and we will provide those results. We don’t do it at the moment and even in the future, it is unlikely that we will be sending out papers to people. But if you need it for whatever reason we will offer you a printout of your results.”

The NCDC boss also complained of the agency’s call centre has been receiving a lot of hoax and unnecessary calls, which perpetually clogged the line and makes it difficult for individuals with genuine complaints to get through.

“26 percent of all our calls last week were hoax calls. One in four of all the calls coming to the NCDC connect centre were hoax calls; people were just calling for one reason or the other – to check whether you’re there, to challenge you, to ask you about Madagascar cure or something like that. These are the challenges that we have that clog the lines but we keep trying to manage that.

“For most of the calls that come to us, our role is to do a risk assessment and then transfer the person to the state government that will ultimately collect his or her sample. The NCDC has never picked up patients; it has always been the responsibility of States government.”