Shocked after samples taken from a goat and pawpaw in Tanzania tested positive, John Magufuli, the country’s president on Sunday ordered a probe on its coronavirus testing kits.
Speaking at an event in Chato in the northwest of Tanzania, Magufuli said the COVID-19 testing kits imported from abroad had “technical errors.”
The president said he had instructed Tanzanian security forces to check the quality of the kits, randomly obtained from several non-human samples, including pawpaw, goat, and sheep, but assigned human names and ages.
These samples, according to him, were then submitted to Tanzania’s laboratory to test for the coronavirus, with the lab technicians left deliberately unaware of their origins.
The President later stated that samples from the pawpaw and the goat tested positive for COVID-19, adding it was likely that some people were being tested positive when in fact they were not infected by the Coronavirus.
“We extracted a sample from a goat which turned positive. This tells you that something is not adding up,” he stated.
“Are we now supposed to quarantine goats and fruits?” the President queried.
