Delta State government on Wednesday disclosed that it has established a testing centre for COVID-19.

The Secretary to the state government, Chiedu Ebie, made the disclosure while inaugurating the laboratory at Asaba Specialist Hospital.

According to him, the centre,coming at the right time, would enable the government control and scale-up diagnostic capacity in the state and also enable suspected cases of COVID-19 to be tested in the state as it allows for a quick result.

The Secretary appreciated the management of Irrua Specialist Hospital and Pandora Group for deploying the laboratory to the state and urged others to partner the government in the fight against the dreaded virus.

“We have just had a brief tour of this test centre which is a partnership between Pandora ID NET and Delta State government and facilitated by Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (ISTH).

“This is the first in the series of test centres that we will be establishing here in Delta and what this means is that we will be able to wrap up our testing of suspected COVID-19 patients or samples so that the results will come out faster within the shortest time possible.

“We are very grateful to PANDORA team and the representative of the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital and also to the Commissioner for Health for all the good work he has been doing and the team from NCDC. We thank you so much for your support,” he said.

The commissioner for health, Mordi Ononye,in his remarks, said the laboratory was a dream come-through as the centre could run many tests as possible stressing that the state government was doing its best in the containment of the disease.

Advising anyone with symptoms of the ailment to report to the appropriate medical facilities of government for treatment, Ononye stated that the state had recorded two deaths to the disease, because the patients reported very late, stressing that the team handling the virus in the state had all the technical know-how to treat suspected cases.

“Over the past weeks, people have been asking how we could get testing centres in Delta. The Irrua Specialist Hospital has been the designated place for the South-South for this type of test.

“We are glad to have Irrua Specialist Hospital and PANDORA partner with us to establish this testing Centre here in Asaba. Obviously, we are doing a lot of active search for contacts and with the establishment of this testing centre we will be more on top of the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic in Delta.

“The state government is doing all that is possible so that Deltans enjoy robust health at a time such as this and I must appreciate our dear Governor, Senator (Dr) Ifeanyi Okowa, who has given every support so that Delta is truly on top of the fight against the pandemic.

“We have a case management team that is capable and equal to the task. Although it is a new disease and everybody is learning but be that as it may, the team has capacity.

“Two of our cases have been discharged successfully and they have reunited with their families; we have three active cases now on treatment.The deaths we have recorded so far were deaths that happened even when diagnosis were made, and we encourage persons who have symptoms similar to COVID-19 to report to any of our centres and attention will be given to them,” he stated.

As directed by the state governor, Ononye advised Deltans to always wear their face masks and to observe proper hand and respiratory hygiene and as much as possible, social and physical distancing.

Responding, the representative of Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Reuben Eifediyi, said the deployment of the centre was to enable suspected cases in the state to have access to medical facilities for testing before treatment could commence.

He appealed to residents of the state to tap into the opportunity to prevent resorting to the hospital when the situation had become critical.

Persons who witnessed the event were; the commissioner for information, Charles Aniagwu and officials of Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital and Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).