PM Abiy Inaugurates Commercial Factory for Covid-19 Testing Kits

Addis Abeba September 13/2020 (ENA)Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has inaugurated the factory of commercial production of Covid-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) diagnostic testing kits both for domestic and export market. 

The factory was built in Bolle Lemi industrial park in collaboration with the government of Ethiopia and the Chinese Company, BGI Health Ethiopia with a priority to African countries and Ethiopia’s domestic demand.

The factory could produce 10 million test kits annually while the country`s overall COVID-19 laboratory tests reached over 1 million people so far.

Commencing the factory today, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said alongside production of testing kits, it will also provide commercial laboratory services for a total of 3 million transit passengers at Bole International Airport and in Addis Ababa city.

“This will boost the testing capacity of Ethiopia and other African countries,” Abiy stated.

Citing the ever-rising capacity of testing COVID-19 in Ethiopia, the Premier said in a short period of intensive works, the testing capacity of Ethiopia becomes 3rd in Africa.

At present, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and antibody testing are the dominant ways that global healthcare systems are testing people for Covid-19.

Currently, the majority of COVID-19 tests that all the reports are coming from are using PCR and PCR gives a good indication of who is infected.

Post COVID-19 pandemic, the manufacture centre will switch to the production of other types of nucleic acid detection reagents, such as AIDS testing kits, tuberculosis nucleic acid test kits and other locally needed a real-time reverse transcription (RT) - PCR test kit products.