Zimbabwe Among 7 African Countries Starting COVID-19 Antibody Tests Next Week

Zimbabwe is among seven African countries that will start administering coronavirus antibody tests from next week as part of efforts to understand the extent of the outbreak on the continent.

This was revealed n Thursday by John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Addis Ababa. He said:

Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco are the first set of countries that committed to it.

Western governments are using antibody tests to find out how many of their citizens have been infected, in the hope that will help them reopen their economies.

According to a Reuters tally, Africa had recorded more than one (1) million cases of COVID-19 and 24 113 deaths on Thursday.

This comes as Russia is set to roll out the world’s first approved coronavirus vaccine amid scepticism about its effectiveness and safety after less than two months of human testing.

President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday that Russia had become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine, which showed “stable immunity” against the new coronavirus and had “passed all the necessary checks”.

More: VOA Studio7; AlJazeera