EXTRA: Goat, pawpaw ‘test positive’ for COVID-19 in Tanzania

John Magufuli, Tanzanian president, has expressed worries over the testing kits imported into the country after samples conducted on them using both goat and pawpaw “tested positive” for COVID-19.

According to Aljazeera, Magufuli, who spoke on Sunday at an event in Chato, northwestern part of the country, said he had ordered investigation into the quality of the testing kits.

It was gathered that they had randomly obtained several non-human samples, including from a pawpaw, a goat and a sheep.

The animals were consequently assigned human names and ages before they were being forwarded to the country’s laboratory to be tested for the virus with the lab technicians left deliberately unaware of their origins.

According to the president, results from the laboratory had shown the pawpaw and goat tested positive for the virus.  Magufuli, however, said there’s possibility of “technical errors” with the test.

He said the development was a pointer to the possibility of people being declared to have tested positive to the virus when they are actually not infected with the virus.

“There is something happening. I said before we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation,” he said.

The development comes about the same time when the president had reportedly ordered for “Covid Organics”, a herbal medicine touted as potential cure for the novel disease — though without scientific evidence — from Madagascar.

“I have already written to Madagascar’s president and we will soon dispatch a plane to fetch the medicine so that Tanzania can also benefit from it,” he said.

The country has so far confirmed 480 cases of the killer virus with 16 deaths, according to worldometers.info.