One thing that countries around the globe have in common now is the Coronavirus pandemic. Which originated in Wuhan city of China in 2019 and have spread across all the continents around the world.
It’s impact and the hardship it brings has brought the world economy to it’s knees. Several countries are under lockdown or some sort of movement restrictions, social distancing and good hygiene awareness is being advocated. This seems to be common and effective practices of controlling the spread of Covid-19.
However, what majority of the countries does not have in common in the spread control effort is the aggressiveness when it comes to testing citizens and residents to discover the extent of the spread of the virus as well as isolating those infected and initiating contact tracing.
This is also a very important aspect of the fight against the spread of Covid-19. The number of tests conducted per day in a country helps to identify, isolate and treat Covid-19 patients as well initiating contact tracing and quarantine, which will prevent further spread. The importance of this step cannot be overemphasized.
This method of control has been proven to be effective if it is applied early enough at the beginning of the outbreak rather than later as was seen in the case of South Korea.
Here is the list of some countries around the world, number of Coronavirus cases and total number of Coronavirus tests each has conducted.
| Country | Number of Cases | Number of Tests Conducted |
| Nigeria | 1,095 | 10,061 |
| Rwanda | 176 | 17,281 |
| Kenya | 343 | 16,738 |
| Ghana | 1,279 | 68,591 |
| South Africa | 4,361 | 152,390 |
| South Korea | 10,718 | 595,161 |
| Iran | 89,328 | 399,927 |
| Italy | 195,351 | 1,186,526 |
| Spain | 223,759 | 930,230 |
| Turkey | 107,773 | 868,565 |
| Germany | 155,782 | 2,072,669 |
| U.S | 925,551 | 4,940,376 |
Looking at the table it is obvious that the amount of tests conducted, Asian countries, European countries and The U.S by far outnumber those conducted in African countries except South Africa who has conducted over 150,000 Covid-19 tests.
As at 20:00 GMT the total number of Covid-19 cases globally stood at 2,875,254 with 201,778 deaths according to John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center
Written by
Ifunanya Ikueze