Algeria Lags Behind Morocco and Tunisia in COVID-19 Testing and Response

"Algeria, which has more than 44 million inhabitants, has only carried out 30,000 tests in 3 months, far behind Morocco which has done more than 208,000, and Tunisia which has exceeded 55,000 tests. A screening policy that does not allow us to know the extent to which the country is affected by covid-19," confides to Maghreb Intelligence a doctor on duty at the Pasteur Institute in Algeria.

This situation is explained by the fact that the Algerian health authorities have only carried out an average of 333 tests per day since the appearance of covid-19. Its neighbors, Morocco and Tunisia, have respectively carried out an average of 2,311 and 611 tests per day.

The lack of vision noted in the Minister of Health, Abderrahmane Benbouzid, would also be the source of this situation, indicate Algerian health sources. "We have noticed a lot of technical problems with the tests and the machines used. In response to the recurring requests for reinforcement of staff and the purchase of tests and reagents, the authorities have remained embarrassingly silent," explains the same source.

Furthermore, the announcement of the manufacture, by a factory installed in Algiers, of 200,000 tests per week capable of detecting asymptomatic virus carriers and delivering their results in 15 minutes, seems like a utopia, as no local production of covid-19 tests has been proven so far. Meanwhile, the mortality rate is rising. The latest report (May 31) shows 9,394 confirmed cases and 653 deaths.