MOPH to enable all hospitals to take samples for Covid-19

The Ministry of Public Health says the test capacity of the samples has reached 2,000 tests per day and efforts are underway to increase it further.

The Acting Minister of Public Health says that in addition to the Afghan-Japan Communicable Disease Hospital and Ali Jinnah Hospitals, two other hospitals have also started taking samples from Coronavirus patients, and the capacity of the Covid-19 tests has now reached 2,000 specimens a day.

“We want to expand our laboratory machines to all hospitals. We will transfer the sampling gears to all hospitals,” said Ahmad Jawad Osmani, Acting Minister of Public Health.

The Ministry of Public Health confirms that there is still no testing capacity for Covid-19 in private hospitals, and the samples taken by these hospitals will be tested for free in government laboratories.

“Private hospitals currently do not have the capacity for testing, they are running samples at central laboratories, and we are diagnosing free of charge,” said Ashiq Khan Saadati, director of the Ministry of Health’s diagnostic services.

Meanwhile, Nasrin Oriakhil, head of the Afghan Medical Council, said, “As monitored, the health services in most hospitals are few and insufficient.”

According to official statistics, 783 new cases have been recorded in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of the Coronavirus in Afghanistan to 26,310.

Reportedly, the number of fatalities in Covid-19 patients in Afghanistan has reached 491 with 13 new registries.

The number of recovered patients has also increased to more than 5,500.

It is worth mentioning that government officials have confirmed that the number of infected and deaths from the Coronavirus is much higher than official figures.