Morocco Emerges as Second-Highest COVID-19 Testing Nation in Africa

More than two weeks after making this major choice, Morocco, the 4th African country at the start in terms of coronavirus testing, has managed to overtake Egypt and Ghana and to settle in second place in Africa, reports Challenge.

After starting with nearly 16,000 PCR tests last April, compared to 20,000 for South Africa, the kingdom has moved to more than 100,000 tests as of May 19, before now reaching a total of 221,554 tests, this June 1. To date, it is outpaced by South Africa, which totals some 742,742 tests for a population 1.6 times larger.

The same source argues that this rise of the kingdom is justified by the gradual increase in the number of equipped and authorized laboratories to perform PCR tests. These centers, which were 3 at the beginning of March, are now about twenty in the country.

For now, Morocco is still far from certain European countries that perform up to 90,000 or even 110,000 tests per million inhabitants. It has tested to date, more than 6,000 people per million inhabitants.