Following the recent increase in local transmissions, iLembe District received their first mobile unit for testing of Covid-19 on Wednesday.

This was part of the national roll-out of the units recently announced by Health minister Zweli Mkhize.

Sixty mobile units are being rolled-out country wide.

The National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) had previously only seven units at their disposal.

Each district and metro will receive one fully-equipped mobile unit.

The unit was received by KwaDukuza municipality speaker Phumlile Zulu at the iLembe district Department of Health offices in KwaDukuza.

Zulu said the mobile unit would first go to areas identified as hotspots.

“They will test people with symptoms immediately and could be used beyond the pandemic to also test for other communicable diseases,” said Zulu.

The mobile unit will enable healthcare workers and field testers to reach smaller, more remote villages.

The sampling and testing units are equipped with a fridge that can store samples at up to minus 26 degrees Celsius.

It is fitted with a computer to feed information on testing and sampling back to the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) central database in real time.

The samples collected will need to be transported to one of the 10 NHLS laboratories for testing, which have new machines to significantly increase the capacity to test the higher number of samples collected.

In KwaZulu-Natal testing was being done at rates of 30 to 100 tests a day before community testing was rolled out on April 16. This has increased to almost 300 tests a day with screening reaching about 40 000 people a day, exceeding the target of 13 000.

Initially the units will test for Covid-19 using the traditional PCR laboratory method but KDM spokesperson Sipho Mkize said they were hopeful the country would soon procure rapid testing kits which would enable people to be screened and tested in a shorter period of time. Currently the turn-around time for test results is up to three days.

However, the NHLS said the rapid tests were subject to validation done by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority. Only once this has been done would they be able to draw up the specification and go out to tender for a large number of the rapid tests.

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