The Government of Ghana, with support from WHO, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and other partners, has expanded COVID-19 testing centres to nine other highly specialized laboratories, easing the load on Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, previously the country’s only facility able to test for the virus.
Noguchi Institute is now working round the clock to carry out Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests for COVID-19, as Ghana ramps up contact tracing.
Already at capacity, working round the clock in 12-hour shifts, Noguchi Institute decided to deploy “pooled sampling” to meet demand, which has rapidly scaled up PCR testing, uses less testing reagents, and shortens waiting time for results to two days from around six, relieving backlogs and overcrowded isolations centres.
Ghana has conducted over 370 000 tests between March and mid-July, making it one of the countries in the WHO Africa Region with the most tests per 100 000 population.
Crucially, this type of testing helps the national COVID-19 response team better understand the spread of the disease and how to direct and adapt their response strategy. This method of COVID-19 testing is not only cost effective, it can also be used at points of entry, in areas with low prevalence of the virus as well as to test asymptomatic people, but in areas with high COVID-19 transmission, pooled testing can give more positive results and reduce testing sensitivity due to dilution as specimens are grouped.