Government has procured four pre-assembled P3 labs to be added to the 30 existing Covid-19 testing laboratories in the country.

According to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, this is to increase the country’s testing capacity for Covid-19 and other infectious diseases.

“These are labs that have an extensive array of safety measures that does a significant number of tests that will be needed, especially to support public response.

“So as part of our Covid-19 response, that’s why we have also added to the package of labs in addition to the over thirty labs that are being for Covid-19, both public and private, being the four P3 labs.”

As of April, 16, 1,049,742 Covid-19 tests had been conducted across the country.

Announcing this at an ongoing conference by medical laboratory professionals, he said that the newly procured pre-fabricated P3 testing labs are expected to further push this number higher.

“We assembled P3 labs, which will be located in parts of the country both in the middle, the Southern belt and in the Northern sector, as a way of expanding our ability to test.”

With the country racing against time to procure more Covid-19 vaccines, Dr. Kumah Aboagye says it’s recent studies show that vaccinees who miss their second jabs by more than the twelve weeks interval will still enjoy vaccine protection.

“Vaccine booster comes with a minimum time for which you can take the booster for it to be more effective. And that is the eight weeks we have now. And that is why we put the eight weeks as the earliest time you can have your vaccine.”

He is, however, assuring that government is exploring other sources to be able to stick to its road map on the inoculation campaign.

“We are looking at Sputnik V, we’re looking at COVAX, we’re looking at Johnson and Johnson. So we have a myriad number of vaccines to choose from including the Pfizer etc, as and when we build our cold chain capacity to take the ultra negative ones.

“We also using multiple approaches through the private sector, government to government approaches and going through the COVAX platform and the AU platform to get vaccines.”